


Coming Home

by mad_martha



Series: Coming Home [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-09
Updated: 2011-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:57:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old friends meet up after many years and start all over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has an odd history. A long time ago there was a discussion at Fiction Alley, on the Harry/Ron "Best Mate" thread, about the possibilities of Harry and Ron getting together after many years apart and other relationships. I seem to recall that the general feeling was it was unlikely that the two of them would develop a romantic relationship later in life, especially if they'd married and had families in the intervening years. Still, it was an intriguing idea, especially as you don't see many fics dealing with the characters in middle age. It obviously percolated for a while in my brain, because eventually this decided to pop out.

It was funny, Ron Weasley thought as he observed the throng, how little the crowd at Platform Nine and Three Quarters changed over the years.  Sometimes fashions changed - although not much in the wizarding world - and occasionally (such as during the Voldemort years) there were unobtrusive guards around the platform, but by and large the scene stayed the same.

Kids raced about, dragging trunks and carrying owls, cats and toads, and yelling to their friends; parents and other supporters made their way more slowly through mayhem, calling to offspring and trying to ensure luggage and familiars were reunited with their young owners.  Farewells were said to friends, greetings said to family, news and gossip and owl-addresses were exchanged, and slowly people made their way in twos and threes out of the portal through the wall to Muggle London.  The only thing that changed was who was performing which ritual with whom. 

Not for the first time, Ron picked a spot to stand in and waited patiently, looking out over other people's heads and scanning the crowd for red hair and arguments.  Instead, what he saw today made his heart stop for a moment and almost convinced him that he was hallucinating.

Small, almost undersized, with untidy dark hair, round spectacles, rather crumpled and travel-stained clothes, and a slightly anxious expression.  A skinny young boy, who couldn't be more than twelve at most, who dragged a trunk behind him with a cage containing an owl perched on top of it. 

It wasn't he, of course - this boy, as he drew closer, had bright blue eyes, not green.  All the same, Ron found it hard not to stare in disbelief as this urchin slowly approached, his eyes scanning the crowd for someone.  Finally he drew level with Ron and stood with his back to the wall, settling the trunk with a sigh.  He glanced at Ron, quick and unsure.

"Hello," Ron said to him, unable to stop himself.

Another fleeting glance.  "Hello."

Even the voice was just as he remembered it.

"Have you lost someone?" he asked.

"I don't think so."  The boy looked at him again and ventured a shy smile.  "I'm waiting for my dad."

"Tell me what he looks like and I'll tell you if I see him, eh?" Ron offered.

"Thanks!  Um … he sort of looks like me, only bigger."  The boy frowned in a very familiar way.  "People say he does, anyway."

"Shouldn't be too difficult then."  This was incredible.  Surely this kid couldn't be - ?

"Are you waiting for someone too?" the boy asked politely.

"My sons," Ron replied, and grinned slightly.  "Perhaps you know them.  Gareth, Walter and Marius Weasley?"

The boy nodded, grinning back.  "The twins!  They're on the Quidditch team.  Professor Bell says they're like human bludgers 'emselves!  But I don't know them really - they're much older than me."

"Just finished your first year?"  The boy nodded.  "Don't worry - the time goes really quickly.  You'll be taking OWLs and NEWTs before you know it."

"Did you go to Hogwarts too?"

"Doesn't everyone?" Ron said with a chuckle.

"I nearly went to Beauxbatons," the boy told him.  "They sent me a letter because my mum went there.  But Dad wanted me to go to Hogwarts."

It was on the tip of Ron's tongue to ask the boy's name, when a familiar voice cut through the babble of the crowd on the platform.

 _"SIRIUS!"_

"Over here, Dad!" 

The boy jumped on tiptoe, waving frantically, and Ron watched with a curious sense of fatalism as a long-missed face appeared out of the crowd.

Harry Potter.

It didn't seem possible.  After so many years - and as Gareth was eighteen this summer, it must have been as many as twenty years or more since Ron had seen his friend - and so little news of him, here was Harry Potter walking out of the crowd of parents and children on Platform Nine and Three Quarters as though he'd never been away.  Harry Potter, dressed in Muggle jeans, shirt and jacket, apparently coming to collect a son Ron hadn't known existed.

Harry, who had walked away after the war, desperate to escape a wizarding world that had become claustrophobic to him after all that he had seen and done. 

Twenty years.  It had to be that long - twenty years in which Ron had got a job with Cleansweep Broomwrights, married, had three children and been widowed.  God only knew what Harry had been doing with himself in that time, apart from clearly having a child with someone who had once attended Beauxbatons Academy.

And then he was there in front of them, pulling the excited boy into a hug, asking if he was all right, if he'd had a good year, if he'd made any friends, got into any trouble, passed his end of year tests without problems ….

Ron stared out over the heads of the crowd, wondering where his own sons had got to, although he wouldn't be at all surprised if they appeared out of nowhere, left their trunks with him, and disappeared again with their friends.  In fact, it was a mild surprise to him that their trunks hadn't already just arrived, apparently unaccompanied, in front of him while he was distracted.

"It _is_ you."

He turned back, bracing himself, only to be greeted by smiling green eyes behind the familiar round spectacles.  Ron felt something huge swell up in his chest, turning into a grin that almost cracked his face.

"Shouldn't that be _my_ line?" he demanded.

Harry laughed. 

Damn it, he looked so well!  Hale and hearty, rather tanned, and utterly unstressed - completely the opposite of how he'd been the last time Ron had seen him.  He looked older, of course, but the years sat well with him, with nothing more than maturity and creases around his eyes that could just as easily have come from laughter.  He held out his arms then and the years were gone - Ron stepped into the embrace and they hugged until he could practically hear ribs creaking under the pressure.

When he finally stepped back, he gave Harry a little shake.

"You tosser!" he said, laughing and shaking his head a little in disbelief.  "Where have you _been_ , all these years?"

 

*

 

The Leaky Cauldron never seemed to change either. 

Today it was full to the brim with parents and children who, having just been freed from school for the summer holiday, were running wild with excitement.  Bagging a table wasn't so hard once Ron had caught old Tom's eye, and the six of them settled down to macaroni cheese and salad, with butterbeers all round.  There wasn't much conversation while they ate, which was a relief to Harry as he was still trying to get over the surprise of Ron's three sons - in particular, the dreamy-eyed eighteen-year-old Gareth, although Marius and Walter, both fifteen and the image of their father, were an equal shock to his system.

The twins only hung around long enough to shovel their meal down; they had friends nearby and were eager to be gone.  That left Gareth and Sirius, but Gareth at once suggested he should accompany the younger boy around Diagon Alley for an hour before the shops closed, tactfully leaving Ron and Harry to catch up on two decades of history.

When they were gone, there was a long pause as both men tried to decide where to start.  It was Harry who broke the silence finally, to ask a question that had been burning ever since he'd set eyes on Ron at King's Cross.

"I still can't get over you having a son old enough to have finished school," he said, fiddling with his butterbeer bottle.  "Where's their mother?"

He'd been exercising his mind over that one.  Initially, of course, he assumed it must be Hermione, but upon consideration he knew that if she'd been their mother she would have been at the station with Ron to meet them.  Besides, while Walter and Marius were just like Ron at fifteen, Gareth bore little resemblance to him aside from the red hair and height, and certainly none of the three bore any resemblance to Hermione.  Gareth didn't look much like any other Weasley Harry remembered, either, but there was something oddly familiar about his faraway expression.

Ron's brows went up at the question.  "She died four years ago," he said calmly.

"I'm sorry - I had no idea.  But then, I had no idea you were married either.  I've been completely out of touch for years."

"It's okay.  What about you?"

Harry smiled faintly.  "I was never even married.  We talked about it, especially when we knew Sirius was on the way, but for one reason or another it didn't happen.  She walked out on me when he was a toddler and I've barely seen her since."

"Blimey, Harry …."

"Oh, she wasn't entirely to blame.  I was messed up for years after I left England and I've never been the easiest person to live with.  But Sirius … he was a turning point for me.  It was a big wrench when he finally had to come to school."

"He told me he nearly went to Beauxbatons," Ron remarked.

Harry shrugged.  "He got an admission letter from them - his mother is half French, half Italian.  I wanted him to come to Hogwarts though.  What about your wife?"

"Luna?"

Harry blinked.  "Ah!  Now I know who Gareth reminds me of.  Good Lord, I had no idea!"

Should it have been such a surprise, though?  Harry wasn't sure.  The last few months before he killed Voldemort had been terrible - frightening, miserable, confused months during which he, Ron and Hermione had alternately fought with and clung to each other.  Sex had become both a source of comfort and a weapon to be used.  It was a wonder, really, that they and their more adult colleagues had managed to defeat the Death Eaters at all.  Sometimes it seemed as though they had done as much damage to themselves as to the enemy.

And any relationship Ron and Hermione might have developed had been ripped apart by Harry himself.  Some years after he'd left England he had finally come to recognise that and feel shame for it, but now, at even more distance and with more understanding, he was also able to see that while his own treatment of them had been a partial factor in their break-up, they would probably have split up anyway eventually.  They none of them had anything to be proud of about those months, but they had been young and scared and looking death in the face.  They had done things they would never have dreamed of doing under other circumstances.




"So what happened to Hermione?" Harry asked after a moment.

"You really are out of touch, aren't you?" Ron remarked, but he didn't seem upset or surprised.  "She's been working in Africa and the Middle East for years now - some charity business to do with displaced wizard communities.  Last time I heard from her - God, it must have been back in February - she was in Tangiers or somewhere like that.  I get an owl from her once or twice a year and I'm hardly ever able to reply because she's on the move so much.  Ginny hears from her more than I do."

"Tangiers?  I was there myself a few months ago.  Weird!"

"You've travelled a lot, by the sound of things."

"Pretty much everywhere," Harry agreed.  "Well … not America.  I did think about it, when Sirius started school here, but I didn't want to be so far away that he couldn't reach me quickly if he needed me.  I spent six months in the Australian Outback once, before Sirius was born - it was very quiet there.  A good place to think.  I've been all over Europe and Africa.  Japan, Thailand, China, Tibet, Nepal …."  His voice trailed off.

"We're doing this the wrong way around," Ron suggested quietly.  "What happened after you left England, mate?"

"I went to France first," Harry said.  He fiddled with his empty beer bottle.  "There wasn't anything there I wanted, though, so I just kept moving.  It wasn't like it was difficult - I had money, lots of money, not just my parents' legacy but everything Sirius left me as well.  There were times when … well, I'd arrive in a place, look around, and take the next portkey out.  Or Muggle flight.  Or I'd Apparate.  It depended on what seemed the most convenient at the time.  That's how I ended up in the Far East." 

He met Ron's eyes for a moment.  "You don't want to know how badly messed up I was by the time I made it to Nepal." 

He didn't want to admit to Ron that he'd left Thailand in a hurry after nearly being caught buying drugs from a man in the street outside his hotel, or that his attempt to head back to Europe had backfired in the most spectacular way.  The look in Ron's eyes suggested that he could guess something of it, but all he said was, "Then what?"

"Let's just say that I crashed in a village outside Kathmandu and a local wizard elder picked me up.  I spent nearly a year with him."  The old man hadn't been a hermit, but he'd been an ascetic of some kind; the locals had treated him like the source of all wisdom.  He'd been hard on Harry but fair.  "He put me back together and sent me on my way."

"And after that?"

"After that, I started to work my way back again.  Not unlike the stuff Hermione does, I should imagine - charity work, sometimes with wizards, sometimes with Muggles.  I met Cleone - Sirius's mother - while I was passing through Portugal.  We were together less than three years.  Actually, I don't think she really wanted to have a baby, but once it happened …."  Harry shrugged.  "She stuck it for a while, then she met someone else and walked."

"Leaving you with a toddler on your hands?"

Harry snorted, sudden humour lighting his eyes.  "What an eye-opener, eh?  I settled for a couple of years in France, in a Muggle village, but when he got old enough to walk, talk and start levitating things, I thought we'd better move on before the locals got twitchy."

Ron chuckled at this.  "Oh yeah - I've been there!  Gareth was a terror when he started to walk.  The first thing he learned to do was magic locks undone - I swear the most frightening word in the language was "Open!".  Then the twins came along and I don't think I slept properly for eleven years."

They grinned at each other.

"So … Luna," Harry prompted.

"Oh!  I think you would have found that funny if you'd been here.  She just kept turning up, after you and Hermione left, and dragging me out for walks at the weekend or insisting I go shopping with her.  You couldn't call them dates - she always had a perfectly good reason why I had to accompany her."  Ron smiled reminiscently.  "The best bit was the proposal.  We were clearing boxes out of the store-room at _The Quibbler_ 's premises - "

"Eh?"  Harry looked at him in disbelief.

"Honest!  So there I was, covered in dust and heaving boxes around, and she's sorting through a stack of old files and rambling away - you remember what she was like - and out of the blue she says, "Oh, and I really do think it's about time we got married, don't you?"  Stop laughing, Harry!  I mean, I _swear_ she was talking about indexing charms and paperclips only a second before that."

He had to stop.  Harry was laughing too much.

" _Did_ you go out together at all before that?" he demanded, when he'd got his breath back.

"Only if you call a cheese and pickle sandwich in a museum café 'going out'," Ron said ruefully.  "I don't think it mattered, though.  I had this impression that she'd decided a long time before that to marry me, and when I didn't do anything about it myself she took charge of the situation.  That was Mum's opinion as well, by the way, only she was really pissed off about it.  She wasn't all that taken with Luna, said her mind was never where it ought to be."

"You'd think she'd be glad," Harry remarked.  "Remember the shriek she set up when she caught Charlie in bed with Roger Davies?"

Ron still sniggered like a teenager.  "And you weren't here when George got married!  He married Kate - oh! - five years ago?  Mum said all hopefully at the wedding that it would be Fred's turn next.  Well, it was, in a manner of speaking - but only because they were sharing Kate.  They've all been living together ever since, and God only knows which kid of theirs is which.  Sometimes I reckon even Kate doesn't know for sure."

Harry found that he could still snigger too.  "Does your mum still talk to them?"

"It was pretty tense for a while," Ron acknowledged, "but she got over it eventually.  Sort of.  She still looks pretty disapproving when they turn up for family parties, and she won't visit their house for love or money.  Not that they care."

"And Bill and Ginny?"

"Bill's still single - I reckon he always will be, to be honest."  Ron smiled.  "He's a bit like you - itchy feet.  No kids though.  Ginny's on her third husband, which also drives Mum nuts, as you can probably imagine."

"Third husband?  Crikey!"

"Yeah - the first one, Dobbin - "

 _"Dobbin?"_

"Nickname.  His real name is Donald, but no one uses it.  Anyway, he worked for the Ministry and I swear he was even more boring than Percy used to be when he went on about cauldron bottoms.  I don't know what got into Ginny, marrying that twit.  That lasted two years, then they got divorced.  After that, she took up with the coach of the Falmouth Falcons - "

"Hang on!" Harry said, frowning.  "If you're talking about Quentin Hopper, he must have been fifty when we were at school!"

"That's him," Ron said dryly.  "He must have something, 'cause she had four kids with him before they got divorced a couple of years ago.  Then she had a fling with an Italian bloke who works for the embassy, and the upshot of that was she married his brother in March.  Luca something-or-other - I can't even pronounce his surname, it's half a mile long."

"Tosca-Nigra di Putanelli?" Harry asked, and Ron stared.

"How did you know that?"

"I guessed, when you said his brother worked for the embassy.  Sirius's mother, Cleone, is related to them on her mother's side."  He grinned at Ron's expression.  "Small world, isn't it?"

"I suppose."

After a while, Harry asked carefully, "About Luna …."

"She caught this virus."  Ron rearranged the salt and pepper pots restlessly, and began to stack the dirty plates and cutlery.  "It was … well, she caught it twice, something to do with her lungs.  After the first time her heart was never right, and when the infection came back she just wasn't strong enough to fight it.  And that was that.  It's been four years since she died.  Funny how it doesn't seem that long."

"And you were married how long?  Fifteen years?"

"Something like that."

"Cripes."  Suddenly, looking at Ron's face, Harry felt terribly guilty.  "Ron, mate … I don't know what to say.  I should have been here – "

Ron's eyes flew up to meet his, astonished.  "Don't be stupid!"

"But …."

"What could you have done?"

Harry winced.  "Nothing, I suppose … but I could at least have been here.  It's just …."  He sighed and pulled his glasses off for a second, pinching the bridge of his nose.  He should have known he would have to confront this sooner or later, but stupidly he'd thought he could reminisce with Ron without it coming up.  "The first year or so after I left England I kept thinking I should maybe come back, but God!  I was such a mess.  I didn't want anyone to have to deal with that."

"Didn't want us to help you, you mean?"  Ron's tone was dry, and when Harry looked at him, surprised, his brows were raised quizzically.

"Not exactly that," he said uncomfortably.  "After the crap I put you and everyone else through in those last few months, I didn't think it was right to expect more from you."

"You talk like it was just you dishing the crap out," Ron said in the same dry tone, "which is funny, because I was there too and I remember dishing out quite a bit of crap myself.  Seems to me that we were all equally messed up – and believe me, Harry, I've thought about it a lot over the years."

"Nothing," Harry said quietly, "justifies what I did to you and Hermione."

"You didn't do it all on your own," Ron said patiently.  "And if you're going to try and tell me that Hermione didn't sleep with you willingly, forget it.  We talked about it after you left – actually, if anything she was more concerned that she'd strong-armed _you_ into bed.  And let's not forget that I slept with you too – quite willingly, I might add.  Just in case you were wondering."

Harry blinked.  "Ah …."

"And I never regretted it," Ron added.

"You two split up over that," Harry pointed out.

"Nah, we didn't."

Harry sat back in his chair, unsure if he should laugh or be outraged.  "That's not what you said at the time!"

"I think we all said a lot of things we didn't mean at the time," Ron said calmly.  He began to rummage in his robes, pulling out a money pouch.

"Let me get it – "

"Thanks, but I'm pretty well off these days."  Ron glanced at up at Harry and began to laugh.  "Don't take that the wrong way, mate!"

"I seem to be putting my foot in it good and proper," Harry said, with a sigh.

Ron only grinned as he put a handful of change on the table.  "Come on, let's find the kids."

 

*

 

"Walter and Marius are probably at Fred and George's shop with a bunch of their mates, if I know them," Ron commented as they left The Leaky Cauldron.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Harry said, looking amused, "but that's a really frightening thought."

"Tell me about it.  Gareth's usually chomping at the bit to get at the books, though.  If he's not in Flourish and Blotts, he'll be at the library.  Unless Sirius has dragged him anywhere?"

Harry smiled.  "I don't know – he likes books, but he likes Quidditch too – "

"Of course he does!"

"And his last letter was full of unsubtle hints about Quality Quidditch Supplies, so …."

In the event, they were both wrong.  Gareth and Sirius were eating ice-creams at Florian Fortescue's, although judging by a couple of bags under their table, both Quality Quidditch Supplies and Flourish and Blotts had enjoyed their custom.  They were discussing the library as their fathers approached, and when Harry glanced at his watch a little doubtfully Ron said, "You might want to come and say hello."

Harry gave him a curious look.

"To Remus," Ron clarified.  "He's been working there for the past five or six years."

Harry stiffened.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said curtly.

"Harry – "

"No, Ron.  We weren't on good terms when I left England.  In fact … we weren't on good terms for a long time before that."

"I told you," Ron said softly.  "We all said a lot of things we didn't mean."

"It's not that simple," Harry said, very finally, and he tucked his watch away.  "In any case, we need to get going."

Ron let it drop; things were too new and, he sensed, too fragile.  He didn't want this to lead to another twenty-year separation. 

"Are you staying here in England, or are you going abroad again?" he asked.

Harry relaxed fractionally.  "I've rented a house for the summer.  After that – I'm not sure."

Ron fished around in his pockets and found an old envelope.  "Got a quill I can borrow, Gareth?"  He wrote his address on the back of the envelope as Harry watched.  "Here," he said finally, handing the scrap of paper over.  "Owl me and we'll get together for a drink or something.  Or firecall, if you're hooked up to the Floo.  If I'm not at home, one of the kids will be."

"Okay – "

Ron looked at his face and rolled his eyes.  He plucked the piece of paper out of Harry's fingers and handed it to young Sirius instead, ignoring his friend's half-laughing protest.

"Make sure your dad calls me, okay?"

The boy grinned back at him.  "Okay!"

"Good lad."

"Traitor!" Harry said to his son darkly.

 

*

 

The house Harry had rented was, like many modern wizard houses, a converted Muggle building.  They tended to vary a lot, but in their most basic form all that was different was conversion of a fireplace and chimney to allow Floo connections.  This type tended to be owned by Muggleborns and 'mixed' families.

At the other extreme was a house that looked Muggle on the outside, but which had been completely remodelled inside to include extra floors, width expansions, multiple Floo points, security wards and magical kitchens (wizards were nervous of Muggle contraptions such as electric ovens and refrigerators).

Since Harry had been raised by Muggles and was just as likely to opt for a Muggle solution to problems as a magical one, he had rented a mostly Muggle-style house with a decent Floo point and sturdy security wards.  It was minimally furnished, which he augmented with various items he had bought over the years and placed in storage as he travelled around, and it was a fair distance from both wizard settlements and his Muggle relatives.

Sirius, as befitted a child who had led a rather nomadic life until he went to Hogwarts, was unconcerned about where they were living for the time being.  He liked the room Harry had fitted out for him and he lost no time in tearing into the pile of presents waiting for him on his bed - some of them items from the countries Harry had visited during the school year, but mostly birthday presents that had been too heavy to be owled to him at school.

"There's one there from _Maman_ ," Harry pointed out conscientiously, and tried not to be pleased when Sirius only nodded and carried on flipping through an ornate book of spells sent to him by his Italian grandmother. 

"She wrote to me at Easter," the boy commented, as he tore the paper off another parcel.

Cleone always remembered his birthday and Christmas, but apart from that her interest in her son appeared tepid at best.  She had, however, thrown a spectacular tantrum when she heard that Sirius would be attending Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons, so Harry received the news that she had written to the boy at school with some anxiety.

"She wanted to know if I was happy," Sirius added offhandedly as he unwrapped a dissectible, moving model of a Hungarian Horntail dragon.  "She said she could transfer me to another school if I wasn't."

"Do you want to transfer?" Harry asked, concerned.  "I didn't think you were unhappy, it sounded like you were okay - "

"Oh no, it's been brilliant!" Sirius assured him.  His face dropped slightly.  "I didn't get onto the Quidditch team though."

"That's okay, it's really unusual for first years to do that, you know.  And you'd really rather play it on a carpet, wouldn't you?"

The boy grinned at him engagingly.  "Yeah!  But we're not allowed magic carpets.  I asked."

Harry chuckled.  "They're still illegal in England, Squirt.  We can fit in some broom practice during the holiday, though.  See if we can get you up to speed for the team next year."

He watched Sirius picking sections off the dragon for a moment or two, before asking carefully, "So what did you say to _Maman?_ "

"Well, I didn't really know what to say," Sirius admitted, still far more interested in the dragon than the conversation, "so I asked Professor McGonagall."

Harry breathed an inner sigh of relief.  Sirius was such a sensible kid.  Professor McGonagall hadn't contacted him about it, but she was exactly the right person to go to in such a situation. 

"What did she say?"

"She said I should answer the rest of _Maman_ 's letter, but not that bit, and when I was ready to send it she gave me a note to put with it.  Dunno what it said, though."  He didn't seem particularly interested either.

Harry thought it likely that the note told Cleone to discuss such matters with him first, and probably included a nicely worded reprimand for impropriety into the bargain.  Minerva McGonagall knew about the situation with Sirius's mother; Harry had been careful to make sure she knew before he sent Sirius to Hogwarts.

"And did _Maman_ write back?"

"Nope.  She never does," the boy added matter-of-factly.

"True."

Sirius finally put the dragon back together and put it to one side, watching for a moment as it paced around in a circle before curling up on his pillow.  Then he looked up at Harry.

"Are we staying in England all summer?" he asked.

"I thought so.  I thought you might want to see your friends.  And there are all sorts of things we can do - visit the Muggle museums, maybe.  We planned to do that sometime, didn't we?"

"Great!"  Sirius tilted his head on one side.  "Are you going to see Mr. Weasley like he said?"

It was strange hearing Ron referred to like that.

"Probably," Harry agreed.

Sirius grinned.  "I'll keep reminding you!"

"Brat!"  Harry punched him gently on one shoulder.  "I'll call him in a day or so, okay?"

 

*

 

In the event, it was more than a week before Harry got around to owling Ron, and even then it was only to let his friend know where he and Sirius were staying.  The days had been taken up with visiting museums and a castle, and meeting several of Sirius's friends from Gryffindor.  His dormitory-mates were Noah Harnett, Tobias Bones and Tedjminder Singh; Noah was Muggleborn, but Tobias was the nephew of Susan Bones, Harry's former Hufflepuff yearmate, and Tedjminder was the son of the Indian Ambassador to the Ministry of Magic. 

Then one day they returned from a trip to find an owl waiting for them.  It wasn't Pigwidgeon, who, like Hedwig, had passed away many years ago, but a rather grumpy-looking Post Owl who glared at Harry as he read the note.

 

 _We're all having dinner with Mum and Dad tonight,_ Ron wrote.  _You'd better be there, because you know what Mum's like and if you don't turn up, there won't be anywhere you can hide._

 

Harry grinned.

 


	2. Chapter 2

There was a shriek and crash of breaking china when Harry and Sirius walked into the garden of The Burrow.  Harry got a brief glimpse of numerous redheaded Weasleys - known and unknown - before Mrs. Weasley threw herself on him, babbling and weeping.  Mr. Weasley had to intervene with a firm "Let the man breathe, Molly!" before Harry had a chance of saying hello to anyone.  She released him, but she continued to pat his chest as though she couldn't quite believe he was real.

"I don't know if I'm on my head or my toes!" she exclaimed, beaming around.  "Harry Potter, after all these years!  You naughty lad, where have you been?"  She rounded abruptly on a grinning Ron and gave him a clout on the shoulder.  "And you!  Letting me think you were bringing a lady-friend to dinner, when all the time you knew - !"

Harry grinned and Sirius let out a little snigger that drew her attention.  Mrs. Weasley's eyes widened. 

"Oh my _word_ \- "

It was fortunate that Sirius was made of sterner stuff than Harry had been at his age.  He bore the unexpected and smothering hug she gave him manfully.

"Look at this!  Well, I never - aren't you the image, young man?"

"Molly, for heaven's sake!" Arthur said, amused and exasperated.  "At least give Harry a chance to introduce the boy!"

"This is Sirius," Harry said hastily. 

He wasn't surprised when Mrs. Weasley blinked and bit her lip before resolutely turning back to the boy and continuing to make a fuss of him.  He didn't expect her to be pleased at the name. 

For the next twenty minutes it seemed like he did nothing but greet old friends and meet their families.  The Weasleys had exploded from a family of nine into one of more than twenty-five, a significant proportion of whom were teenaged or younger.  Harry lost track of the children; it was easier to fix the names of the spouses instead. 

Bill, of course, was single and to Harry he didn't seem to have changed one inch, still laid-back and fancy-free (much to his mother's evident frustration), with long hair and dramatic dress-sense.  Charlie's partner was a startlingly blond man of Scandinavian appearance who was introduced to Harry as Jokul Savirsson, an expert on colddrakes; Ginny's husband was a dark-eyed Italian called Luca, who greeted Sirius as a relative.  George's wife Kate - mother of three small boys and, seemingly, Fred and George as well on occasion - was a shy, sweet young woman who (to Harry's astonishment) turned out to be a Muggle.

There was a hole in the middle of the Weasley family, though, one that Harry realised had not gone away in all the time he had been gone.  Somehow, nothing disguised the absence of Percy, who had died during the war.

Ron appeared at Harry's side finally, with a couple of butterbeers. 

"Here," he said, handing one to Harry.  "Knock that back and catch your breath."

Harry grinned at him.  "So your mum thought I was some mystery woman, eh?"

Ron snorted.  "She wishes!  Not likely, though."

"No?"

"No!  She reckons I'm lonely, now the kids are all away at school for most of the year.  I keep telling her, at the end of the day I'm too busy writing letters to the twins, telling 'em not to get into trouble.  I don't have time to go out chasing women."

Harry smiled.  "I notice your Gareth is the oldest of the lot.  Were you the first one to get married?"

"Nah, Ginny was, but like I told you, it didn't last."

They stood on the sidelines, watching as the kids raced around yelling and the adults gossiped.  Sirius seemed to have made friends in no time at all, and was investigating a tree house with Ginny's eldest son.

"I think I upset your mum with his name," Harry observed after a moment or two.

"She was waiting for you to say you'd called him James, probably."

"She was never that keen on Sirius, was she?"

"Yeah, well - you know Mum."

Another pause.

"You didn't tell me what you do these days," Harry said.  "I'm guessing you don't work for the Ministry."

Ron chuckled.  "Not likely."  He looked at Harry and a grin curled the corner of his mouth.  "I'm a broomwright.  I've been working for Cleansweep practically since the war ended."

Harry was delighted.  "Brilliant!"  He laughed suddenly.  "Can you do me a deal on a couple of decent brooms?  I never replaced my Firebolt and these days all I've got is a contraband flying carpet."

"I could probably knock you up a couple of specials, so long as you don't go broadcasting it.  Remind me to take you round the workshop sometime."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."  Ron smiled at Harry's expression, glad that the look of wide-eyed wonder Harry so often had as a boy hadn't been entirely killed off by adulthood.  "We've got a prototype up for testing in the next couple of weeks - fancy a test flight?"

"So long as you aren't expecting to see any fancy moves."  Harry's looked regretful.  "I've flown a few times since I left England, but only cheap hire-brooms and never for more than a short flight.  I need a reasonable broom for Sirius, though.  He badly wants to be on the Quidditch team when he goes back to school, but he learned to fly on a carpet in Morocco, so he's not quite up to scratch yet."

Ron studied his face for a moment before asking shrewdly, "Does he know you were the most successful Seeker at Hogwarts in a hundred years?"

"No," Harry replied at once.  "At least … _I_ haven't told him, certainly.  I suppose he's heard something by now though."

"He probably got told by someone at school," Ron warned him. 

"He hasn't said so."

"Do you think he would?"

"Maybe not," Harry admitted, and he grimaced slightly.  "He's changed a bit since I put him on the train last year.  Not in a bad way, but …."

"They all do, mate," Ron told him gently, recognising the look on Harry's face.  "Give it twelve months and you'll have the hormones to deal with too.  Gareth even went all Percy-ish on me for a while - thank God he grew out of _that_."

Harry wondered if he should take this opportunity to talk to Ron about Percy, but in all honesty he wasn't sure what he could say.  So he shrugged inwardly and instead asked, "What about the twins?"

"It'd be hard to tell the difference between a hormone rush and their normal behaviour," Ron said with a grin. 

"I've been wondering how much they're like Fred and George …."

His friend scratched his ear, looking thoughtful.  "Well … they are and they aren't, if you know what I mean.  They're not troublemakers for the sake of it, anyway.  It's just that they're like Luna - they think outside the cauldron and they cause a lot of mayhem by experimenting.  They don't do it to make people laugh, though, they do it to see what'll happen."

Harry had a sudden memory of Luna herself at fourteen, telling him that her mother had died during one of her experiments.

"Aren't you worried they'll blow up the house?" he asked.

"Nah," Ron said easily.  "Once you've survived Fred and George, you can survive anything."

He had a point, Harry had to admit.

 

*

 

Dinner involved two sets of trestle tables and every adult pitching in to pass plates around.  The noise reached what Bill described to Harry as "Weasley wedding reception" levels, and it was almost impossible to keep the children in their seats. 

Harry found himself sitting at the end of one table next to Mr. Weasley and across from Bill.  To his mild relief, Mrs. Weasley was too busy flitting around making sure that everything was going smoothly to do more than beam at him in passing.

Now just past wizard middle age, Arthur Weasley seemed a little thinner than Harry remembered, with more lines on his forehead and the barest fringe of greyed red hair around his head.

"I'd ask where you've been all these years, Harry," he said, smiling faintly, "but I imagine that's a story that would take a while to tell, so for now I'll just say 'welcome home'."  And he touched the edge of his water glass to Harry's in salute.

"Thanks, Mr. Weasley."

"You're a little old for that kind of formality, don't you think?" Ron's father told him, raising his brows.  "It's Arthur."

Harry smiled back.  "I'll try, but old habits die hard!"

He looked around for a moment, checking for his son.  Sirius was at the next table, in the middle of a noisy group of boys; Harry had already noticed a complete absence of any girls, which, Ron had once told him, was a long-standing trend in the Weasley family.  Ginny had been the first girl in several generations.

"You don't have any grand-daughters yet, I see," he remarked.

"We live in expectations," Mr. Weasley replied cheerfully.  "Possibly one day Bill will oblige."

This was obviously a long-standing joke, for Bill merely raised his glass to his father with a grin. 

"That'll be the day!"

Harry chuckled.

"What about you, Harry?  Just the one?"

"Yes – I wasn't with Sirius's mum long enough to repeat the experiment.  I don't mind, though."  He smiled.  "We get by just fine with the two of us."

"He seems to be a sociable fellow," Mr. Weasley noted approvingly.

"We've moved around a bit.  Sirius has learned to make friends where he finds them."

"Useful skill to have," Bill remarked.  "How's he doing at school?"

"He's happy, he seems to have passed all his tests, and his end of year report was good, so I don't think I have anything to worry about at the moment."  Harry looked rueful for a moment.  "Ron reckons that'll change."

Bill and his father chuckled.

After a moment, Bill remarked, "I'm glad you've come back.  Ron's missed you, you know."

"I didn't realise until I saw him how much I'd missed him," Harry admitted.  "Hermione too ….  He told me she's not around much either."

"She pops up every now and again," Mr. Weasley said mildly.  "Usually dressed all by guess and bursting with enthusiasm for yet another obscure charity she's raising funds for."

Bill snorted.  "She tracked Charlie down in Sofia last year and bullied him and Jokul into helping her set up a reserve for endangered magical species.  When I heard she was heading in my direction next, I beat a retreat - fast."

Harry laughed softly.  "She doesn't change, then!"

"More's the pity!" Molly Weasley said unexpectedly, plopping into a seat next to her husband.  He handed her a glass of wine, which she toasted them with and took a sip of.  "It's about time that young woman settled down.  Charity work is all very well, but her poor parents must have given up hope of ever seeing some grandchildren from her!"

Harry noticed that as she said this her eyes were sliding towards Ron and he wondered if she was even aware she was doing it.  He felt a surge of sympathy for his friend and in a spirit of mischief that he hadn't felt many years, he said, "There you go then, Bill!  There's your answer."

Bill started, slopping wine over himself, and cursed, Arthur Weasley tried unconvincingly to turn a laugh into a cough, and Molly looked at the three of them in bewilderment.

"Bill - and Hermione?  Well, I don't know …."

"What about you?" Bill demanded of Harry, making a partial recovery.

"Me?"  Harry considered, then turned in his chair to look for his son.  "What do you reckon, Sirius?  Should I get married?"

Sirius's brow furrowed.  "What, to _Maman?_ " he asked sceptically.

 _Not likely!_   "To anyone."

The boy shook his head decisively.  "No.  Marius - " he pointed to Ron's son " - says you're a hero.  If you're going to be a hero you have to be tragic, and that means you can't get married or do anything fun."

This inspired piece of logic prompted a roar of laughter from the adults, and a wry grin from Harry himself.

"Thanks a lot, Squirt!"

But when he turned around in his seat again, he saw that Ron was watching him, and his friend raised his glass in a silent toast.

 

*

 

"Ginevra Tosca-Nigra di Putanelli.  It has a certain ring to it," Harry mused, as he sat in a corner of the garden seat with her as dusk fell.

Ginny snorted in a most unladylike way.  "I can't see me using it very often!  I suppose I'll have to learn some Italian now, though."

"Sirius could probably teach you a bit.  His grandmother's been teaching him."

"I can't believe your son is related to my husband."

Harry grinned at her.  "Like I said to Ron, it's a small world.  So … what have you been up to while I've been gone, besides getting divorced and having kids?"

Ginny gave him a gentle shove with her foot.  "Stop it.  You sound like my mother."

He blinked.  "Ginny, I'm the last person to judge you.  Son out of wedlock, remember?"

"Hm.  You're forgiven then.  Don't expect Mum to let you get away with it so easily, though.  Give it a week and she'll be trying to marry you off, as well as Ron."

There was a sour note to this that Harry was quick to pick up on.

"Granted I haven't spent more than a few hours in his company so far," he said carefully, "but it's pretty obvious that - well, it seems to me, anyway - that it's too soon for him."

"It's not a matter of too soon," Ginny said, a little sharply.  "He was happy with Luna and he doesn't _want_ to get married again.  And why should he?  But Mum _has_ to organise our lives for us.  You'd think she'd be happy that Ron got married and had kids the normal way, but it's never enough for her.  She can't bully Bill into settling down, I've horrified her by getting divorced twice, Charlie's gay, and Fred and George … well, you'd have to be blind not to see what Fred and George are up to with Kate.  So she interferes with poor old Ron and his kids, and it drives me mad to watch, Harry.  Marius and Walter ignore it - you know what twins are like - but she's started on poor Gareth now, making a fuss because he hasn't taken the Ministry entrance exam.  He's been offered a perfectly good apprenticeship with Ollivanders, but all she says is that it has no prospects - "

She let out a sudden breath and gave him an apologetic look.  "Sorry.  I don't know where all that came from.  I just get so frustrated."

"It's okay.  You obviously needed to get that off your chest," Harry replied, and he gave her a small smile.  "If it's any consolation, I don't think Ron's taking much notice of her."

"Don't be fooled," Ginny warned.  "This is the first time in weeks that he's visited - Mum nags him so much that he stays away.  And he hasn't said, but I know they had a row about Gareth the last time he came round."

Harry shook his head.  "Well, she'll have a hard time marrying me off, but let's see if I can't distract her for a while."

Ginny touched his arm gratefully.  "I'm glad you've come home, Harry."

He smiled.  "You know, it's weird.  I wasn't sure when I hired the house for the summer, but - I think I'm glad to be home, too."

 


	3. Chapter 3

"I'd like to borrow these books, please," Sirius said politely to the thin, grey-haired man at the library desk.

The librarian didn't look up from the pile of newspaper cuttings he was sorting through. 

"Do you have your library card with you?"

"Um … I don't have one."

"Then you'll need to apply for one."  The man stopped rummaging, took a form from a tray to one side and turned to give it to Sirius.  He froze when he set eyes on the boy.

"May I have an application form?" Sirius asked him, wondering why he was staring.

The librarian seemed to recover himself. 

"Yes, of course - here."  He handed the form over.  "You can fill it out at the desk over there."

Sirius obeyed this instruction, although he felt a little uncomfortable - the librarian stared at him the whole time and when he finally handed the form back, there was a significant pause before the man looked at it.

Silence.  Then the librarian said, very brusquely, "You'll need to get this signed by one of your parents.  You'd better ask them to come in - I'll hold onto it for now."

Sirius looked wistfully at his pile of books.  "Okay …."

"I'll keep your books for you as well.  Run along."

 

*

 

"Is this just your workshop?  Where are all the other broomwrights?"

"This is how Cleansweep operates, mate.  It's not possible to run Muggle-style factories, they take up too much room, so we each have a workshop wherever we can find suitable premises."  Ron patted his workbench in satisfaction.  "I was working out of a room behind Fred and George's place for a couple of years, but this place is much better.  More light."

Harry stared around the sawdust-strewn area in fascination.  There were brooms in every stage of construction stacked against the walls, including the raw wooden poles that would be shaped into the handle.  Only the final stages - trimming, finishing, add-on accessories - were dealt with elsewhere.

"This is amazing," he said.  "I always wondered how brooms were manufactured.  Do you put all the charms on as well?"

"Of course.  Everything except the specialised stuff like invisibility spells and global location finders.  I used to do the final polish and trim as well, but business is so heavy these days that they've brought in people to do that stage separately.  It's more important to produce the brooms in quantity."

"Is that a Cleansweep Ten in the vice?"

"Yep."  Ron unclamped the half-finished broom and handed it to Harry, who examined it curiously.  "It's an old model now, but we still make them because they're reliable family brooms and always sell.  Remember the Shooting Star?  It finally went out of production about eight years ago.  This one pretty much pushed it off the market."

"So where's this prototype you were telling me about?" Harry asked.

"Aha!"  Ron grinned.  " _That_ one isn't here.  I'll have to take you to my other workshop to see it - if I tried to work on it here, it'd disappear overnight.  Nimbus have been going crazy trying to get their hands on the blueprints."  He took a broom that seemed to be finished in all but its last polish from a rack on the wall and held it out to Harry.  "This is a model from a couple of years back - the Spacer.  Try the balance, will you?"

Harry took it and laid it on the floor.  He held his right hand out. 

"Up."

The broom zoomed into his hand with gratifying promptness, so he swung a leg over it and settled himself into the cushion spell, tucking his feet up onto the rests by the twigs.  Then he took his hands off the handle and rested them on his thighs.  There was a tiny quiver from the broom that made his shoulders twitch with the urge to counterbalance.

"It might be me, but I think it's listing to the right a bit.  Not much, but it might vibrate at high speeds."

"I thought so.  Let me have it."

Harry dismounted and handed the broom back.  He was disconcerted to see Ron grinning at him broadly.

"What?"

"You say you haven't ridden a broom since you left England?"

"I've flown once or twice, but - "

"Harry, you're a natural, you always have been.  Do you realise that I've had five or six people sitting on that broom who all told me there was nothing wrong with it?  Only you said you could feel the list."

Harry flushed.  "That just means you've been asking the wrong people."

"Yeah, it's always a mistake to ask other broomwrights," Ron joked.  "It takes a Quidditch player to really test-fly a new broom, but the management won't let me do it because they're paranoid that trade secrets'll get out.  Besides, the first thing most active players do is fly the broom into the ground.  Harry mate, if you're looking for a summer job, you can test brooms for me and a couple of blokes I work with.  What do you say?"

Harry was about to reply to this when Sirius knocked on the door and walked in.

"Hullo Sirius!  You found us all right, then?" Ron said.

"Yes, thanks, Mr. Weasley."  Sirius stuck his hands into his pockets, surveying the workshop in interest for a moment or two, before turning to his father.  "Dad, will you sign my application form for the library?"

"Of course.  Let me have it."

"I can't.  The librarian said you have to go in to sign it."

There was a pause. 

Ron gave Harry a meaningful look.  "Looks like you don't have much choice now, does it?"

 

*

 

Harry squeezed Sirius's shoulder as they walked into the library.

"Why don't you go and have another look around while I sort this out?" he suggested.

Sirius gave him a knowing look.  "Is he going to be difficult?"

Harry blinked.  "What do you mean, Squirt?"

"He gave me a funny look earlier.  Does he know you?"

"Yes, but don't worry about it, eh?  I'll make sure you get your card."

"Okay, but if he's going to be horrible to you, you can tell him I don't want to be a member after all," Sirius said firmly.

"That'll teach him," Harry agreed, a little amused in spite of his nerves, and he watched as the boy wandered off into the shadowy stacks.  Then he took a breath and approached the main desk.

His hair had turned completely silver in the intervening years, he was thinner than ever and there were more lines in his face than Harry remembered, but Remus Lupin remained essentially the same.  It took an effort to meet his light brown eyes, though, and face the old disappointments, weariness and cool judgement that were in them.

"I understand you need me to sign a form for my son," Harry said, when they'd stared at each other for a moment.

"I didn't expect you to come yourself," Lupin remarked dryly.  "I rather expected you to send your wife."

Harry swallowed a sigh.  "For that, I'd have to have a wife.  Wouldn't I?"

A pause.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that."

The old urge to snap back, to tell Lupin to keep his damn judgementalism to himself and point out that he had no business saying that when he knew nothing of the circumstances, surged up and had to be battered back.  Harry felt his lips tighten with the effort not to rise to the bait.

"I suppose not," he said as coolly as he could manage.  "The form please?"

Lupin pushed it to towards him and indicated a quill and inkwell on the side of the desk.  He watched as Harry wrote his name and the date and appended his signature to the bottom of the form.

"Did you have to give him that name?"

"Yes."  Harry looked up sharply and couldn't stop himself.  "Some of us don't want to forget our friends - _Moony_."

"And what do you call disappearing for two decades, without a word to anyone?" Lupin demanded, his voice rising slightly.

"I never _forgot_ any of you," Harry said angrily.  "I stayed away at least partly to escape people's unreasonable expectations of me.  Besides - did you really want to hear from me?  I didn't get that impression before I left!"

"Oh, is _that_ why you left England?  I could have sworn it was hide your drug habit from us!"

Shock turned Harry cold all over.  He couldn't believe Lupin had just said that, although it was less of a shock that the man had known - he had always been far too perceptive.  Then a tiny sound made him look around; Sirius was staring at the pair of them, wide-eyed, from a few feet away.  The dismay in the boy's eyes told Harry all he needed to know and made him feel physically sick.

It took an effort of will to look away from his shocked face and turn to Lupin again.

"Maybe it's just as well you gave up teaching," Harry told him curtly.  He pushed the form back across the counter.  "One Snape at Hogwarts is probably enough, don't you think?  Come on, Sirius."

Ron was waiting in the street outside.

"That was quick!  Are we having lunch or - "  He stopped, seeing their faces.

"Not now, Ron."  It took an effort to speak; Harry had his arm around Sirius's shoulders and he could feel the tension in them.

"Harry?"  Ron frowned, glancing at the library doors.  "What happened, mate?"

"We'll have to do lunch another time.  Sirius and I need to have a talk about something."

"Floo me later," Ron said in a tone that brooked no opposition.

Harry nodded distractedly; he was more concerned at that moment about finding the nearest Floo point so that he could take his son home and explain to him what he had just overheard.

 

*

 

Ron stepped out of the dining-room fireplace that evening just Harry and Sirius were finishing dinner.  Harry had eaten his, though it tasted like ashes after the uncomfortable conversation he'd had with his son that afternoon; Sirius was half-heartedly pushing the remains of his salad around his plate with a bread crust.  Ron looked at the pair of them and rolled his eyes.

"Who died?" he asked, with a touch of morbid humour.

"Very funny," Harry muttered. 

He gathered up the plates and took them through to the kitchen; in the background he could hear Ron saying something to Sirius, who responded in a subdued tone.  Harry gritted his teeth.  After a moment or two Ron strolled into the kitchen behind him, his eyes wandering idly over the furniture.

"You're renting this place?" he remarked.

"For now."  Harry scraped the plates and put them in the sink, and set the tap running.  Some habits died hard; washing up by hand was one of them.

"For how long?"

"Probably only until Sirius goes back to school."  Harry sighed and faced his friend.  "Let me guess.  Remus paid you a visit and now you're here to find out if it's all true.  Although you could just have waited for the evening edition of the _Prophet_.  I should think it'll be all over the front page after a barney like that in a public place."

"You're such a drama queen sometimes," Ron told him.

"That sounds familiar," Harry said bitterly.  "All it needs is for you to add the bit about how not everything is about me, then I'll punch you and we'll be right back where we started two decades ago."

"Remus hasn't paid me a visit," Ron said, ignoring this.  "He hasn't said anything to me either.  I could tell he was pretty pissed off, though."

"He's been permanently pissed off with me since I was sixteen," Harry retorted.  "It's just a matter of degree.  Nothing I do can ever please him."

"Harry - "

"I seem to remember having this conversation with you and Hermione once before," Harry interrupted.  "I told you then: Remus never really forgave me for Sirius's death, and when I compounded the offence by refusing to pretend Sirius had never existed, he washed his hands of me."

"That's not true," Ron said quietly.  "He loved Sirius."

"Yeah, and wasn't I a poor exchange?  Believe me, he never let me forget that.  Nothing I did from then on was ever good enough for him - dammit, I killed Voldemort and _still_ he wasn't happy.  You know, there were days when he didn't even look at me, let alone speak to me.  In the end, I had to get out of that damned house and just _go_.  I couldn't take it anymore."

"He was depressed," Ron said.

"Weren't we all," Harry snapped. 

He turned back to the sink and switched the tap off.  A squeeze of washing-up liquid, a pan scrubber … it was a wonder the pattern didn't wash off the plates, he was so angry.

"Go on - ask," he managed, after a moment or two of silence.  "That's what you came here for, isn't it?  To find out what we quarrelled about this time."

"We're not kids anymore," Ron said, and finally there was an edge in his voice.  "You don't have to keep lashing out at me just because you're upset."

Silence.  Harry leaned on the edge of the sink for a moment and tried to remember why he'd thought staying in England for the summer was a good idea.  He grabbed a tea towel and turned back to Ron, wiping his hands.

"Okay," he said curtly.  "Do you remember why we ended up in bed together that time?"

In spite of his annoyance, Ron's lips twitched at the memory.  "Yeah.  We found Bill's stash of funny fags and got completely stoned.  Well … almost completely."

"Did you ever take drugs again after that?" Harry asked him coolly.

"Are you kidding?  Between the hangover, Hermione shrieking at us and Bill yelling at me, it was never worth it."  Ron's amusement faded at Harry's expression.  "Did you?"

"Oh yeah.  I thought - that felt pretty damn good.  Why not do it again?  So when I couldn't find Bill's stuff, I found somewhere to buy my own.  And when the supplier offered me something a bit better, I tried it."  Harry smiled bitterly at Ron's expression.  "I kept on trying different drugs - heroin, cocaine, crack, you name it.  It's a good thing I'm a wizard, because if I'd been a Muggle some of the stuff I took would have killed me - I damn near ended up dead a couple of times as it was.  I told you I crash-landed in Nepal, didn't I?  Well, I _literally_ crash-landed.  I tried to Apparate from Bangkok to Naples and ended up in Nepal.  It took two months for old Tenlieng to detox me, and nearly a year before I was straightened out completely."

He tossed the tea towel onto the worktop and folded his arms across his chest.  "And now, thanks to Remus's big mouth, I just had to explain all that to my son.  I don't suppose he had a lot of illusions about me, but that's something I would rather have told him about in my own good time, when I thought he was ready to hear it."

"Remus knew about the drugs before you left England?" Ron asked, after a shocked pause.

Harry shrugged.  "He smelled it on me, I think.  Just another big disappointment in a long line of disappointments.  He never said anything at the time, though, just avoided me like I was a plague-carrier, but by then I'd stopped caring."

"And yet you obviously _do_ care still," Ron pointed out dryly.

The anger began to trickle away.  Harry pulled his glasses off and pinched his nose. 

"Yeah, well ….  He was the last link to my parents after Sirius died.  I suppose I always hoped … never mind."

"Seems to me that the two of you need to talk about this properly."

Harry laughed mirthlessly.  "On a cold day in which hell?"

"Try it," Ron advised him.  "He's changed a bit over the years.  And I know you think he didn't care, Harry, but I reckon he missed you when you were gone."

"A bit late by then, wasn't it?" 

The words were curt, but there was a lost look in Harry's eyes that Ron remembered only too well and hated to see on his friend after all this time.

"I reckon it's only too late when you're dead," he told him.  "Believe me, there were a lot of things I wished I'd said to Luna when it was too late.  At least Remus is still here and you _can_ talk to him, even if it seems like he doesn't want to hear it."

The last of his anger drained away at this.  "Ron …."

"Don't start!  I'm not being maudlin, I'm just saying.  You belted out of here with a lot of unfinished business - did you think it would all just go away while you were gone?"

"No, I suppose not," Harry muttered.

Ron shook his head.  "Owl him, Harry.  Talk to him."

"Maybe."

Ron looked at him and decided to leave it there.

"And for the record," he said in a lighter tone, "I didn't end up in bed with you _because_ of the funny fags.  They just … helped things along."

The lost look vanished; the corner of Harry's mouth twitched slightly.  "Yeah?"

"Oh yeah."

 

*

 

It was tempting simply to uproot and spend the rest of the summer in Europe, which was certainly how Harry would have dealt with the problem when he was younger.  But he was forty now; the days of running off were long gone and he didn't regret them.

So Harry waited for a day when Sirius was out with his friends and invited Remus Lupin to tea.  The timing was carefully planned; if they had a row again, Remus would be gone before Sirius got back.  If, on the other hand, things didn't go too badly, it was possible Sirius would return in time to be properly introduced.  All the same, Harry wasn't sure if Lupin would even accept the invitation and it came as something of a surprise when a politely worded note of acceptance was brought by Sirius's owl, Gerda.

Then the nerves settled in and he felt obliged to do a quick spring clean of the house, followed by a trip to the nearest shop for a more refined selection of tea and fancy cakes.  So much for being an adult.

He was just beginning to wonder if this was a really big mistake, when the Floo chimed and Lupin stepped out of the fireplace.  They stood looking at each other for a moment, and Harry realised that he didn't have a clue what he was going to say to the man. 

"Thanks for coming," he said after a moment.

Lupin raised a brow.  "Did you think I wouldn't?"

"It crossed my mind."  Harry stepped back and gestured towards the little coffee table and comfortable chairs he'd set up in the window earlier.  "Have a seat?"

They sat down and silence fell.

Lupin had both changed and not changed in the intervening years.  Harry knew from odd articles he'd read here and there that the Wolfsbane Potion had been improved and stabilised since the war; werewolves still had to suffer the change, but it was no longer as dangerous or painful as it had been.  Anti-werewolf legislation had also largely been rescinded, allowing them to work, marry and lead more or less normal lives within the confines of their condition.  So his father's friend was ageing like any other man, perhaps a little more advanced thanks to early suffering, but no longer impoverished, malnourished and disenfranchised.

The quiet grace of deportment, the dignity and the veiled eyes remained exactly the same.  Harry met those eyes and suddenly remembered how he had left England.  A familiar sense of shame began to crawl in his stomach and he knew what he had to say.

"I owe you an apology, Remus."

Lupin tilted his head to one side slightly.  "Oh?"

"Leaving a letter for you when I walked out was a rotten thing to do.  I know we weren't exactly on good terms, but the least I should have done was tell you to your face." 

Lupin regarded him for a moment, then indicated the teapot.  "Shall we?"

Harry flushed at this reminder and leaned forward to tap the pot with his wand.  Fragrant steam emerged and Lupin's brows rose as he breathed it in.

"Darjeeling, Harry?  I'm impressed.  I didn't think you had a taste for fine tea."

"It makes a nice change occasionally.  Milk?"

"No, thank you."

Harry passed the cup over.  "Actually, I developed a taste for green tea a few years ago, but it's not everyone's, um …."

"Cup of tea?"  For the first time, Lupin smiled faintly.  "You used to drink ordinary afternoon tea, like someone else we both knew."

Harry told himself not to overreact to this oblique reference to Sirius Black. 

"Strong enough to dissolve the teaspoon," he agreed.  "I couldn't drink it like that now."

Lupin sipped at his tea reflectively for a few minutes, then carefully put the cup and saucer back on the table.

"It would certainly have been preferable for you to tell me you were leaving yourself," he said, returning to the original topic.  "Aside from anything else ….  Harry, you were never very eloquent on paper, but that particular example of prose was extremely hard to swallow.  Do you remember what you said?"

Harry chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. 

"No," he admitted.  "Not clearly, anyway.  I think I was probably pretty rude."

To his dismay, Lupin reached inside his robes and extracted a folded sheet of parchment.  It was old and yellowed, but well preserved, as though it had been tucked inside the cover of a book.  He unfolded it carefully and held it out.

To Harry's increasing shame, he could see something that had obviously either escaped his notice or he had not cared about at the time - either of which was only too likely.  The letter was written on the back of a cheap advertisement of the kind that was bulk-owled along with the mail and daily newspapers.  Faded lettering invited the occupants of 12 Grimmauld Place to a sale at Fosbie's Fine Furnishings, 81 Diagon Alley.  The date on it was December 1999.

He turned the parchment over.  It was hard to recognise his own handwriting; clearly the quill had needed trimming, but that didn't excuse the shaky letters that would have shamed a ten-year-old or the smudged ink.  No one looking at it would have believed it had been written by a young man approaching twenty.  It was very nearly illegible, but unfortunately not nearly enough for the sentiments it contained to be misunderstood.

After a moment, Harry folded it up and handed it back.

"I'm sorry," he said helplessly.  "I know that's a pretty pathetic thing to say, but I'm so terribly sorry, Remus."

"It would have been a pathetic thing to say back then.  But at this distance …."  Lupin tucked the letter away again and looked Harry in the eyes.  "I owe you more than one apology too, Harry.  For a start, I had no business attacking you like that in the library.  It was the shock of seeing you again after all that time, but that's no excuse for shouting out something so personal.  It's bad enough that your son heard me.  I take it he didn't know?"

"No … but it's okay."  Harry took a few sips of his own tea before adding, "I should have told him before now, but it's not an easy subject to raise with anyone, let alone a kid."

"I suppose he must have taken it reasonably well, or we wouldn't be sitting here now."

"Well … it wasn't a fun conversation, but he's okay about it.  He's a good kid, a lot more sensible than I ever was."

There was another long pause, but this time it was friendlier.  Lupin seemed to be pondering things as he drank his tea.

"So," he said finally.  "You're not married - divorced?"

Harry shook his head.  "Never got married.  Sirius's mother left us when he was two.  We see her occasionally, but it's always flying visits - he sees more of his grandparents."

"He looks remarkably like you.  Except for the eyes - he didn't inherit Lily's eyes as you did."  This was said with a faint smile.

Harry looked rueful.  "No, he got the blue orbs from Cleone."

"And he's what - ten? eleven?"

"Twelve."

"So he's already at Hogwarts?"

"Yes - the biggest cause of arguments with his mother these days, that and his name.  She insists on calling him by his middle name - Yves - and it drives both of us nuts.  And she's _not_ happy that I decided to send him to Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons."

"I should think that if she hasn't been around for most of his life, then she's rather forfeited any right to complain," Lupin remarked.

"I made the mistake of asking her opinion," Harry replied, a little sour at the memory.  "It seemed like the fairest thing to do at the time; we even visited both schools together beforehand."

"If you were living abroad, why _did_ you send him to Hogwarts?"

Harry looked at Remus and a guilty smile emerged. 

"Am I that obvious?  I was mostly happy at Hogwarts and I wanted him to go to my school.  Besides, Beauxbatons … it was very elegant and impressive, but I couldn't imagine him being comfortable there.  And I was a little afraid they'd turn him into someone I wouldn't recognise."

"There's nothing wrong with wanting what you think's best for him, Harry," Lupin said.  He raised a brow.  "So long as it _is_ what's best for him and not what's best for you.  Or worse, something you can use to hurt his mother."

"I've tried my best not to turn him against her in any way," Harry said after a moment.  "She drives me mad with the way she treats him, though.  We make arrangements to meet her and she doesn't bother to turn up, then she'll appear out of the blue and expect him to terribly excited.  She'll write to him but ignore his replies, then complain that he never writes to her.  It gets harder all the time to find excuses for her behaviour.  I don't know that he believes me anymore, anyway."

"If she is as you say she is, he'll draw his own conclusions as he grows older without any need for you to interfere.  Am I to assume from your tone that she's likely to make an appearance here before he goes back to school?"

"Probably."

"That should be interesting."  Lupin finished his tea and put the cup on the table again.  "Harry …."  He hesitated.  "We should talk about Sirius - _our_ Sirius."

"I had no business saying that the other day," Harry said at once.  "I know you haven't tried to forget him - "

Lupin raised a hand, halting him. 

"You may have said it purely to hurt, but there was a certain amount of truth in the statement, all the same," he said resolutely. 

"Remus - "

"No, Harry.  I may not have tried to forget him, but I did put quite a lot of effort into putting him behind me.  It wasn't fair to you and I know it made you angry.  It wasn't fair to him either, really," he added, and his expression tightened for a moment, "but I like to think he would have understood."

"It took a long time," Harry said, "but I did understand, eventually.  I kept forgetting that it was the second time you'd lost him.  And … it wasn't until I was much older, but eventually I realised just how _much_ you'd lost."

Lupin stared at him for a moment, then his face relaxed into a rueful smile.  "I'm amazed no one told you at the time."

Harry snorted.  "I spent most of my time with the Weasleys.  Do you honestly think Molly would _let_ anyone tell me something like that?"

"Sirius intended to, you know.  He was going to that coming summer, but ….  And I simply couldn't after that.  I'm sorry, Harry.  I should have known better; so many people were keeping things from you or telling you half-truths at best, and Sirius's death should have been the only warning any of us needed that keeping you in the dark was a terrible idea."

"I held a grudge about that for ages," Harry said.  Suddenly feeling restless, he picked up the teapot.  "Another cup?"

"Please."

Harry refilled Lupin's cup and pushed the dish of small cakes towards him.  A vague memory stirred, of during the summer before his fifth year at school and seeing Sirius bribing Bill Weasley to bring him a box of marzipan sweets from Diagon Alley, even though Sirius himself didn't have much of a sweet tooth.  Those marzipans had never made it to any of the kids in the house and he wondered now, as he watched Lupin selecting a marzipan-covered cake, why he hadn't put all the pieces together far sooner.

"Molly never stopped trying to shield me," he continued, "right up until I left school and even afterwards.  It drove me mad.  Someone like Tonks would try to explain something to me and Molly would interrupt all the time.  And getting anything like the whole story out of Dumbledore was impossible.  After Sirius died he said he would tell me everything, but that was a lie."

"I doubt even Severus and Minerva knew everything," Lupin replied.  "After confronting Grindelwald, I think Dumbledore kept a great many things close to his chest, so much so that it became a habit."  He sighed, pondering the little cake between his fingers.  "Harry, it's all water under the bridge, as my mother used to say.  We all made terrible mistakes and bad things happened because of it.  But in the end most of us survived and I think that's as much as we could reasonably have asked for.  There were plenty of times when I didn't think we would, you know - so many moments when we skirted the edge of disaster.  It's long past the time when we should have moved on."

"Can we?" Harry asked him.

They looked at each other and Lupin smiled ruefully.

"Dear God, I hope so!  They tell me that with this new Wolfsbane Potion, I can expect to live to a hundred and twenty or more.  That's a miserable prospect if we're going to be quarrelling for the next sixty years."

 


	4. Chapter 4

A few days later, Harry had the dubious pleasure of escorting Sirius, Tobias and Tedjminder to the birthday party of their friend Noah.  As Noah was Muggleborn, this involved Flooing to a discreet wizard pub on the outskirts of Exeter, a short train journey and a bus ride.  Sirius was a seasoned traveller and took all of this in his stride, but the other two got overexcited and had to be given a stern talking to long before Harry got them to their destination.

He then had to endure three hours of careful conversation with Noah's mother and father; very ordinary professional people who reminded him a little of Hermione's parents.  For the first time, however, Harry found himself in the position of being a kind of ambassador from the wizarding world to the Muggles, rather than the other way around.  The Harnetts, he suspected, still didn't entirely believe in magic, in spite of the numerous incidents throughout their son's childhood that they were painfully eager to question him about.

This would have been easier to bear if Noah's party hadn't also included several of his young cousins, all of whom were Muggles and who had no idea that there was anything unusual about him.  Apparently the Harnetts had sold their families a story about a scholarship to a boarding school, which was fine as far as it went, but Harry felt like he was walking on pins and needles for the whole afternoon, terrified that Tobias or Tedjminder - neither of whom had any experience of Muggles whatsoever - would say something out of place and plunge them all into a crisis.

Fortunately, a good hour was taken up by Tedjminder performing what was evidently his party piece - showing the others how he tied his gorgeous red silk turban.  Since he hadn't quite mastered the art himself yet, this involved a lot of giggling and fooling around as the tremendous length of silk was wound, unwound, tied and retied, repeatedly.  By the time it was finally smoothed into place again to his satisfaction, Harry got the impression that he and Tobias had mostly forgotten they were wizards, as they settled in to help Noah unwrap his presents, eat the usual birthday feast and get into food fights with the others.

The return journey was only slightly harrowing (Tobias became distracted by a vending machine at the railway station and to be dragged away by Sirius just before the train left without them) but by the time Harry finally flopped into bed that night, he was mentally and physically exhausted. 

His own birthday was next.  He rather hoped everyone would let him sleep through it.

 

*

 

"Happy birthday, mate," Ron said, leading Harry through his house.

"Thanks," Harry replied a little wryly, as he tried not to stare too much.

It was a quaint little wizard house, but not at all what Harry had been expecting.  Ron had explained briefly that he and Luna had bought it when they married, with the help of her father.  Considering that, like The Burrow, it was situated on the outskirts of a Muggle village, it was very much a magical house.  Harry half expected to discover that it was constructed entirely of gingerbread; it had that kind of look to it outside. 

The interior bore no apparent connection to the exterior, though, and was entirely different to The Burrow.   It didn't have Mrs. Weasley's brand of patchwork and hand-knitted homeyness stamped all over it, for one thing, and after four years without a female influence the clutter was beginning to run wild.  (Not that Harry was sure Luna's presence would have made any difference.  She had never struck him as a domesticated girl.)  The ceilings were low enough in places that Harry wondered how Ron put up with them, the floors, at least on the ground floor, were made of stone flags that were occasionally uneven, and the outer walls were so thick that there were substantial recessed seats wherever the windows were.  All the rooms seemed to be placed around a central hall that had a spiral staircase leading up - and down - through the house.




The furnishings were unusual too.  Apart from the odd chair or table that didn't match (and stuck out like a sore thumb), the furniture seemed to have been carved out of sections of an enormous tree trunk.  The golden wood was polished to a high glow and had soft cushions and rugs spread across it for comfort.  There were paintings and hangings on the walls, all rather odd and abstract and which Harry suspected had been made by Luna.  There were also photos in wooden frames, mostly ranged across the wide mantelpiece over the living room fireplace; pictures of Ron and Luna and the boys at various ages.

"My workshop's out the back," Ron said, so they walked through the kitchen which was dominated by another tree-trunk table and chairs and looked like a whirlwind had passed through recently, leaving cupboard doors open and crumbs and dirty plates everywhere.

"The twins never put a damn thing away," Ron grumbled.  "And it's like a plague of locusts when their mates come round."  He flicked his wand; the crumbs whisked themselves into a rubbish bin, the cupboard doors closed and the plates tidied themselves into the sink.  "Look at this lot and weep, mate - you've got all this to come with Sirius."

"He's pretty tidy," Harry remarked.

"So were Marius and Walter, once."

Then they were walking out of the back door into a garden that was a riot of magical plants, shrubs and quirky trees.  There was a stretch of grass in the middle that was surrounded by untidy borders and big enough to kick a ball about on, and on the far side of it the ground level dropped steeply.  A pebbly path ran around the edge of the garden to a set of steps down to the lower terrace and it was at the bottom of these steps that Ron's workshop was located; a little hobbit-hole with its door hidden behind an ambitious holly bush and wreathed in misdirection spells.  Ron had to take Harry's wrist and lead him inside, or he would have ended up in the pond a few yards away.

This workshop was far bigger than his official one.

"Does it run under the house?" Harry asked, amazed, as Ron puttered about, lighting lamps and whisking a small amount of debris away.

"Sort of.  It's part of the basement, but if you entered it from inside the house, you wouldn't know this bit is here.  It's totally segregated."

"And how much work do you do here?"

"I keep this for prototypes and test models, and I do repairs and the occasional custom job.  Which brings me to the purpose of our visit …."

Ron disappeared into the back of the workshop, reappearing a few minutes later with an unmistakably broom-shaped parcel, which he held out to Harry.

"Happy birthday."

"Ron …."  Harry almost didn't want to take it.  "You haven't – "

"Just open it, will you?  I guarantee it's not what you're thinking."

Harry gave him an admonishing look, but obediently unwrapped the broom.  It was … oddly familiar.

"It's my old Firebolt!" he said, before he could stop himself.  Then he looked again.  "Only it can't be.  This is new."

"Actually, it _is_ your old Firebolt," Ron said, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

"But that poor old thing was losing its twigs!  I left it at Grimmauld Place …."

"And I rescued it before Remus shut the house up.  That was the year Luna and I got married … Remus asked if there was anything I wanted before he put everything under covers, and I found your broom when I went to check.  It got left in the rack at Mum and Dad's for a few years, but when I qualified as a Master Broomwright, I brought it here to see if it could be rescued."  Ron ran a gentle finger over the gleaming finish of the handle.  "Firebolts were bloody well constructed, Harry.  The handle was still sound and twigs are the easiest part to replace, so I stripped it down and rebuilt it from the handle up.  In fact, it's probably as good as the current model now, if not better.  The original spec was nought to a hundred and fifty in ten seconds, wasn't it?  I reckon you'll get a hundred and eighty out of it now – two hundred with a good tail wind.  That's as good as you'll get out of the Firebolt Grand-Flash XL.  Nimbus have been getting complacent."

"Ron …."  Harry shook his head at the broom, lost for words.  "I don't know what to say.  The last thing I deserve is a birthday present like this after disappearing for twenty years, but - thank you."

On impulse he reached out and pulled Ron into an awkward, one-armed hug, and was surprised – and pleased – when his friend hugged him back fiercely.

"I missed you, mate," he said after a moment.

"Missed you too," Ron said gruffly into his left ear.  "You've no idea how much."

They released each other, a little embarrassed, but Harry couldn't help thinking that there had been more going on with that hug than met the eye.  He cleared his throat.

"So … can I get your advice on a broom for Sirius sometime?  I haven't kept up with the current models and you know how finicky Quality Quidditch Supplies are about test-flights."

"Of course."  Ron fished a couple of battered wooden stools out from under his workbench and they sat down.  "If he's not as confident on a broom as you used to be, you don't want to get him anything too fast or showy.  Did you say he learned to fly on a carpet?"

"Yeah – they play a wicked game of Quidditch in Morocco.  I picked up a two-seater rug there that's nippy like you wouldn't believe."  Harry's nose wrinkled.  "Takes corners like a roller-coaster though."

"I wouldn't mind trying that sometime!  But I was thinking only yesterday …." 

Ron got up without finishing the thought and went back to his broom cupboard at the back of the workshop.  When he returned he was carrying a broom that was slightly shorter than normal, with a handle that seemed to be formed from two branches twisted together so tightly that they'd fused during growth.

"This is an odd thing," he said, hitching himself onto his stool again.  "I pick up unusual brooms at auctions and trade fairs sometimes.  This one came complete with design sheets, from a chap who used to work for Comet twenty or thirty years ago.  He told me it was an experiment, a prototype developed with the idea of breaking into the eastern market, but there's never been much interest in brooms out there and it died a death without ever going into production.  Here, feel it."

Harry took the broom, holding it across his palm.  It was beautifully balanced. 

"Slightly heavier than normal," he remarked.  "What's the handle made from?  I've never seen one that pale before."  He ran a hand down the shaft.  "Odd feel to it, too."

"It's Eucalyptus wood – quite dense and needs a special polish, since it's a gum-wood.  The twist gives the broom a flying action that's not dissimilar to a carpet – or so the chap claimed.  It's certainly not like any broom _I've_ ever flown before, but it handles well with no fussiness or kicks in the tail.  It's got a couple of unusual safety charms on it as well, to stop anyone unfamiliar with a broom taking a tumble.  He should give it a decent test flight, of course, and it'll probably need a bit of tweaking, but if it suits Sirius he can have it."

"Are you sure?  At least let me pay for it."

"Why?"  Ron looked amused.  "I didn't!  I bought the blueprints and patent, and the broom came free with them.  Actually, it'll be interesting to see what Sirius makes of it.  Walter told me his friend, the Singh boy, was broom-shy as well.  That's not unusual with kids raised in the East who come to Hogwarts, but if this broom makes a difference for them, I might be able to set up an interesting little sideline."

"Do you even have time for that?" Harry asked him, casting an amused glance around the cluttered workshop.  There were almost as many half-finished brooms there as in Ron's official workshop.

"It's as much a hobby for me as a job," Ron admitted.  He too glanced around, and he smiled sheepishly.  "I love brooms, Harry.  I always have."

"There's nothing like doing a job you love," Harry agreed, smiling slightly.

"Yeah …."  Ron shook off the sudden reflective mood, and slapped Harry's knee.  "Want to see that prototype, then?"

 

*

 

They spent the afternoon with Sirius and the twins at a Quidditch match, watching the Chudley Cannons take their usual thrashing from the Appleby Arrows, followed by tea at an isolated wizard pub on Dartmoor. 

Then Ron glanced at his watch and said "Better look in on Mum and Dad since we're in the neighbourhood."  Harry thought he was the only one who heard the tiny note of constraint in Ron's voice as he said this, but he made no comment and they took the pub's Floo to the Burrow.

Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were sitting out in the garden when they arrived, with a guest Harry didn't recognise until she let out a shriek of _"Harry!"_ and threw herself on him.  Caught by surprise, he nearly didn't recover in time to catch her –

Hermione.

 

*

 

"I know it's a horrid imposition, but I'm not about to borrow Ron's spare bedroom while Molly's having one of her matchmaking fits."

"It's not an imposition," Harry said calmly, as he pulled sheets and pillows out of the closet and charmed them onto the spare bed.  "The room's here and it's not like we're using it."

Hermione was poking around quite unabashedly.  "Is this a rented house?"

"Yes – I've taken it for the summer, until Sirius goes back to school.  After that, I haven't decided."

"You don't have commitments anywhere else, then?"

"No, not really.  I've been doing charity work since before Sirius was born, but nothing fixed or regular.  We've moved around a lot, but that's mostly inclination, not necessity."

"So you could stay put now, if you wanted to."

Harry hid a grin.  Ginny had obviously expressed herself very freely to her friend, when she wrote to tell her that he had returned to England.

"Maybe."  He gave the final cover a tweak and stepped back.  "Your room, milady."

"Thank you, Jeaves." 

Hermione tossed her bag onto the bed; it was made of carpet and bulged at the seams, but hardly seemed big enough to carry more than a change of clothing.  It reminded Harry irresistibly of Mary Poppins's bag and he suspected it was just as deceptive in its depth. 

Then Hermione herself jumped onto the bed beside it and gave him a sardonic smile.  When Harry had first had a chance to take a good look at her at the Burrow, he'd had to do a double take.  The neatly dressed, rather prim-looking Head Girl was long gone and in her place was a slim little woman dressed like a hippy, with wild hair pinned up with two wooden knitting needles, and wearing baggy tie-dyed trousers, hand-made multi-coloured leather sandals and a loose cheesecloth tunic.  It was a hard image to reconcile with her former self and he was still getting used to it.

"I'm going to make myself at home here and drive you mad," she told him now.

"That'll have novelty value, at least," Harry replied, a little amused.

"Ginny said you split up with Sirius's mother years ago.  So where is she now?"

"What - literally?  No idea.  Cleone's a free spirit, but I imagine she'll turn up here in London sometime before Sirius goes back to school.  She won't hang around, though.  She never does."

"Should I make myself scarce when she does turn up?"

Harry shrugged.  "Not on my account.  There's nothing going on between us these days, if that's what you mean.  We usually manage to be civil to one another for Sirius's sake, but that's as far as it goes."

"So you're single?  How long has that been going on?"

He raised his brows at this very blunt question.  "On and off since Cleone walked out.  More 'off' than 'on', really.  Most women don't want to take on some other woman's kid and the occasional blokes weren't interested in relationships.  But then, neither was I.  Sirius is my responsibility and I've raised him quite successfully on my own so far."

"Does she have any say in that?" Hermione asked interestedly.

"If she offers an opinion, I take it into consideration … but I don't accept much interference.  I listen more to her parents, since they tend to be more consistently interested in his welfare."

She nodded.  "He told me he speaks French and he's learning Italian because of them."

Hermione had spent over an hour with Sirius that evening, making friends over his school holiday work.  Sociable as the boy was, he was rarely quite as open with adults as he had been with her.  They were on excellent terms within minutes of meeting.  That said, he'd made friends with Ron almost as quickly too.

"What I can hardly believe," she continued, as she sat up and began to unpack her bag, "is that he's related to Ginny's husband.  That's just amazing."

"Oh, I don't know.  The European wizard community isn't _that_ big …."

"So what does she look like, this Cleone?  I can't get any ideas – Sirius looks just like you did when you were twelve."

Harry leaned against the doorpost.  "Have you met Luca?"

She rolled her eyes.  "Yes, and I must say that while I can quite understand why Ginny found him attractive, I can't imagine why she married him.  He's the most gorgeous thing in nature, I'm sure, but he must be ten years younger than her and I'm sure he has a cushion where his brain should be."

Harry decided not to comment on this.  "Well, Cleone looks a lot like him – dark curls etc. - only she has blue eyes.  And brains," he added pointedly.

Hermione snorted.  "I should hope!  You're clearly a man of the world, Harry – doesn't Luca strike you as being pure studmuffin and nothing else?"

"Maybe that's what Ginny wants, after two duff marriages and four kids?"

"Say what you like.  _I_ say he'll be chasing the neighbour's teenaged nanny within a year."

Harry was less convinced of that.  Ginny had matured into quite the voluptuous beauty, and even four children didn't seem to have marred her figure.  She was also as sharp as a whip; if Luca was as brainless as Hermione seemed to think, he'd have a hard time outmanoeuvring his new wife.

He changed the subject.  "Has it occurred to you that while Molly won't be able to fantasise about you and Ron getting together while you stay here, she might get entirely the wrong idea about you and me instead?"

"You haven't been around for a while," Hermione said with a sigh, "so I don't expect you know just how hard she's been trying to marry him off.  Believe me, it'll take more than me borrowing your spare room to get _that_ idea out of her head.  If I wasn't here, she'd be inflicting some other witch of her acquaintance upon him.  He's taken to avoiding the Burrow, according to Ginny – did you know that?"

"She said something of the sort to me.  Apparently Molly hassles him about Gareth too."

"Ron and Gareth are soft targets – they're the only ones who don't stand up to her.  Ginny, Fred and George shout back, and Bill and Charlie just ignore what she says.  But Ron … well.  He's always taken it to heart more, even when he actually defies her.  Perhaps even more so then.  He defied her when he married Luna, you know."

Harry's brows went up at this.  "No, I didn't.  He mentioned that Molly wasn't all that taken with her but – "

"She was furious," Hermione said flatly.  "She said Luna was unreliable and came from the wrong sort of family.  And that she seduced Ron and played on his "chivalrous instincts", if you can believe that."  She looked briefly amused.  "I love Ron dearly, but he doesn't really _have_ chivalrous instincts, bless him.  He's just the steady, decent sort who likes a quiet life.  And the idea of Luna seducing anyone is as batty as some of those hats she used to wear.  But when he decided to marry her – "

"He told me it was her idea."

"It probably was, but never think he was unhappy about it.  When he decided to marry her, Molly threw a fit and he dug his heels in.  It was quite unpleasant for a while and Molly never really accepted Luna into the family, any more than she's accepted Kate – by the way, you do know about Fred, George and Kate, don't you?"

Harry rolled his eyes.  "Yes, I know about Fred, George and Kate – or as much as I want to know, anyway.  But Ron and Luna …."

"Molly predicted that it would never last and Ron would probably leave Luna."  Hermione paused in pulling a toiletries bag and nightdress out of her bag and grimaced at the memory.  "Of course, that didn't happen and instead Gareth and the twins made their appearances.  And then Ron was doing so well in his job and Luna was co-editing _The Quibbler_ with her father ... they were happy, Harry.  Then just before the twins went to Hogwarts, she caught that infection.  She spent nearly eight weeks in St. Mungo's the first time around and when she came out she was … fragile.  And of course, a year later it came back."

After a moment or two of silence, Hermione straightened up and dusted her palms on the seat of her trousers matter-of-factly.  "I think Molly gave it a year before she started trying to introduce Ron to new women.  Being Ron, of course, he didn't challenge her about it – he just stopped going home."

"Thanks for filling me in," Harry said.  "I had no idea things were so tense.  She was going on about you not being married and hinting at Ron the first evening I went over there, so I just joked about you and Bill instead, but if I'd known – "

Hermione rolled her eyes.  "Oh, Bill and I were over years ago!  He's fantastic in bed, but far too much of a thrill-seeker for my liking."

He blinked.  "Er … did I want to know that?"

She patted his arm kindly.  "It's always useful to know, although I don't think you're really his type."

Harry tried not to overreact to this.  "I … don't think he's my type either, Hermione."

"Probably not.  Anyway, that's not the point."  She fixed him with a stern look.  "So – will you stay beyond the school holiday?"

"I'm beginning to think I should," he admitted.

"Good.  Ron really missed you, you know."

"People keep saying that to me – _Ron_ even said it to me."  Harry sighed and hung his head briefly.  "I should have come home sooner, I know.  But you wouldn't have wanted me here the way I was for the first couple of years after I left.  And after that, there were things I needed to do – and then Sirius came along – and then there just didn't seem to be any point until it was time for him to go to school.  Sometimes it doesn't seem possible that it's been over twenty years.  The time just flew by."

"I know," Hermione said gently.  "I'm not blaming you.  But maybe it's the right time for you to come home now, Harry.  There are things you need to do here that have been waiting ever since you left."

 

*

 

Sirius liked the broom Ron gave him very much.  They spent a couple of afternoons at the workshop while Ron (displaying a pernickety craftsman streak Harry would never have guessed he possessed) adjusted it to his satisfaction, then they all went over to George and Fred's house to try it out properly, since George and Fred had a secluded field behind their property.

Sirius wasn't the natural on a broomstick that Harry was; very few people were.  But if he was slow and cautious at first, he rapidly grew in confidence as he got used to the broom's action.  It didn't hurt that Ron and his brothers cheered him on as Harry coached him through a series of basic Quidditch manoeuvres.  The afternoon ended with them all in the air, playing an impromptu game with a variety of different sized balls belonging to the twins' sons.

This determined two things: that with a little practice, Sirius would probably make the Gryffindor team without any problems as soon as a vacancy came up, and that he was no great shakes as a Seeker.  He _was_ a rather good Chaser, though; a fact which, Harry told him solemnly, his grandfather James Potter would have been delighted about.

This was confirmed by Remus Lupin later that evening.  He popped in to bring Sirius his library card and pile of books and ended up staying for dinner when he discovered Hermione was there.  It took about half an hour of Sirius ruthlessly talking of nothing but brooms and Quidditch, but eventually Lupin was nudged into talking about James Potter a little.

The conversation nearly stuttered to a halt again, though, when Sirius suddenly said, "What about Sirius Black?  He was on the Quidditch team too, wasn't he?  Dad's got a photo of him and Granddad in Quidditch gear."

For a second Lupin seemed to freeze and Harry drew in a breath to say something - he didn't know what – to break the tension.

But after a moment the older man recovered himself, saying quietly, "It seems very odd to hear James referred to like that."  He turned to face Sirius.  "Yes, Sirius was on the team too - when he wasn't grounded by Professor McGonagall for getting into trouble, of course.  He was a Beater.  He and James made a team within a team, really, they played a splendid game together."

"And you?" Sirius asked eagerly.

"Oh, I didn't play," Lupin replied, smiling a little.  "I wasn't a bad flyer, but I was ill a lot when I was your age and I simply wasn't strong enough to play Quidditch.  I spent a lot of time sitting in the stands with your grandmother, cheering the others on."

"He's certainly a Potter," he remarked to Harry later, as he was preparing to Floo home.  "Quidditch mad!  James would be as proud as punch."  He hesitated, then added, "Sirius too.  Nothing would have made him happier than to know his namesake was carrying on the grand tradition."

"Hopefully not _quite_ as much mischief, though," Harry observed ruefully.

Lupin's eyes lit up with rare laughter for a moment.  "Oh, I don't know!  Isn't that what going to Hogwarts is all about?"

 


	5. Chapter 5

In no time at all the summer holiday began to draw to a close, and Harry began to wonder if they would see Sirius's mother before the boy went back to school after all.

Rather than leave it until the last minute, he took Sirius shopping for clothes and equipment a good week beforehand, thus avoiding the unseemly rush that always seemed to happen in Diagon Alley a few days before the train was due to leave.  The seemingly endless list of textbooks, uniforms, quills, ink, parchment, potions ingredients and herbology equipment was purchased and stowed away in his trunk. 

They also paid a separate visit to Ollivander's.  Harry wanted to get Sirius fitted with a different wand; the one he had started school with had been bought in haste from a French wandmaker, and although Sirius seemed to be getting on all right with it, there was no comparing it to an Ollivander wand.  So the two of them stepped inside the cramped little shop and submitted themselves to the unnerving scrutiny of the elderly proprietor.

"Ah yes," Ollivander said softly, pale eyes fixed on Harry.  "Mr. Potter … holly, eleven inches, with a core of phoenix feather.  A remarkable wand for a remarkable wizard."

Harry shifted under that gaze.  "I'd like to replace my son's current wand, please."

"Indeed?"  The gaze shifted to Sirius, who eyed the wandmaker nervously.  Ollivander held out one thin hand and the boy handed his wand over for minute examination.  "Hm ….  A Chourelle creation – ash, twelve inches, with a core of dragon heartstring.  Serviceable, but not a wand I would have recommended for the young gentleman.  Let me see …."

He was gone, disappearing around the shelves full of boxes, while his magical tape-measure whisked out from behind the counter and began to measure Sirius.  Minutes later, Ollivander re-emerged with a pile of boxes and they began to go through the performance of waving wands about.

"Ebony and unicorn hair … oak and phoenix feather …beech and unicorn hair … walnut and dragon heartstring ….  Hm," Ollivander said at length, quite undaunted.  "Another tricky customer – like father like son, eh, Mr. Potter?  Let me see, let me see – yes, something a little different for the son of The Boy Who Lived, perhaps …."

Another box was produced and Sirius, rather fed up with the procedure, gave the wand an unenthusiastic flick.  Brilliant blue sparks streamed from the tip almost at once, to the relief of everyone.

"Mahogany and unicorn tail-hair, eleven and three-quarter inches," Ollivander said, in a tone of great satisfaction.  "Untouched since it was crafted over a hundred years ago.  _This_ wand should give good service."

They were emerging from the shop when there was a cry and Sirius was enveloped in a cloud of pale blue silk and expensive perfume.

"Yves, _mon petit chou!_   I 'ave been looking for you everywhere!"

Cleone had finally arrived.

 

*

 

"I 'ave spoken to Madame Maxime," Cleone said, over coffee and pastries in Diagon Alley's most expensive restaurant.

"Have you?" Harry asked, coolly polite.  It wasn't the expense of the venue that was bothering him; it was the lack of privacy.  "And why would you do that?"

As usual, Cleone ignored a question she didn't want to answer. 

"She is still 'olding a place for Yves for the coming year."

"His name is _Sirius_ ," Harry said, willing himself not to grit his teeth.  "And there is absolutely no need to put Madame Maxime to such bother.  Shall I write and tell her so myself?"

Cleone's magnificent blue eyes flashed over the rim of her coffee cup.  Black coffee was all she would allow him to serve her; she had disdained the pastries without even looking at them.

"He is my son.  I wish 'im to receive an appropriate education for a French wizard, one that will ready 'im for an _international_ future, not one from a school which will teach 'im only to aspire to – " she flicked her fingers dismissively " – low positions in regional Ministries."

"You've been spending too much time with Muggles," Harry told her dryly.  "You seem to forget that the magical community doesn't have a central European government."

She pointed one elegantly manicured finger at him.  "Do not laugh at me, 'Arry.  I am serious."

"I'm not laughing, Cleone, believe me."

"You never listen to my wishes – "

"If you bothered to show more than an occasional interest in him, I might be inclined to do so.  Your parents show more interest in Sirius than you do!  Incidentally, I consulted your mother and father before I sent him to Hogwarts and they were happy for me to do so."

"But I am not 'appy!" she said furiously, leaning forward and thumping her chest with her fingers.  "And I am 'is mother!"

People were starting to take notice of their conversation and Harry began to lose his temper. 

"Do you want to see his school report for his first year?  He settled in really well, made lots of friends and passed all of his end-of-year tests without problems.  His teachers all speak well of him.  What more do you want?  He already speaks two languages and is making good progress in a third.  And if it's international connections you want for him ….  Well, aside from having family members spread all across Europe – including two here in London – he's sharing a dormitory with the son of the Indian Ambassador who, I might add, has just invited him to stay with his family in Maharashtra next summer.  Madame Maxime couldn't do better for him, Cleone, and she'd be the first to tell you so."

There was a chilly silence.  Cleone sat back in her chair, her beautiful face marred by a scowl.  Harry was grateful he'd sent Sirius off to Lupin at the library before having this conversation with her.  It wasn't right for a boy to witness this kind of behaviour from his parents.

Then she changed tactics.

"I am getting married soon."

 _Here we go again,_ Harry thought wearily.  He'd heard this before.  "Are you?"

"I think it right to tell you first."

"That's very considerate of you."

Cleone traced the gilded pattern on her china coffee cup with a light fingertip.  Her eyes would not meet his.  "I am thinking it will be better if Yves comes to live with my 'usband and me when we are settled."

Harry stiffened.  "I don't think so."

"He is my son.  A child should be with 'is mother!"

"He's not much of a child anymore, or hadn't you noticed?" Harry snapped back.  "He'll be thirteen in March, Cleone.  How often have you bothered to spend time with him in those thirteen years?"

Again she ignored this, but her mouth was beginning to pucker with temper.  "If you try to keep 'im from me – "

"I've never tried to keep him from you.  I let you know where he is – or your parents, if I can't contact you – and I've told you time and again that you're welcome to visit him whenever you wish.  I've even offered to bring him to you, but I seem to recall that you didn't like that idea much – probably because it might have interfered with your busy social schedule."

Trembling with anger, she pushed her coffee cup aside and picked up her dainty, pearl-stitched bag.

"When I marry, Yves will come and live with me," she said, her voice rising as she stood up.  "And if you try to stop me, 'Arry Potter – "

"You'll do what?" he demanded, getting to his feet too.

"My family are not _nothings_ like yours.  We 'ave connections – I 'ave friends."

Something inside him snapped – possibly at the suggestion that his parents, who had died to save his life, were _nothing_ \- and Harry did something he hadn't done since his lowest moments after the war.

"And you seem to forget," he told her coldly, "that I destroyed Lord Voldemort."

Even after so many years, mention of that name was enough to plunge the entire restaurant into silence.  Cleone finally seemed to realise she had crossed the line; she turned white under her carefully applied make-up.

Harry dug a shaking hand into his pocket, pulled out a handful of Galleons and slapped them on the table.

"Now, if you'll excuse me – I have to go and collect my son."

He stormed out of the restaurant without a backward glance.

 

*

 

"I can't believe she did this to us," Harry raged several hours later.  He screwed up the evening edition of the _Prophet_ with considerable violence and hurled it into the kitchen fireplace.  "Bad enough that she just _appears_ in the middle of Diagon Alley looking like she was dressed for Ladies' Day at Ascot, but to pull a tantrum like that in front of a restaurant full of people – and then _this -_ "

 _"Gently,"_ Hermione told him, with maddening calm.  "It was bound to happen sometime, wasn't it?  You've always been hot news – it's a wonder they haven't said something before now."

"I could have handled that!" Harry snapped.  "But no – I have to feature as the heartless child-snatcher who denies my beautiful, long-suffering ex-partner access to her son and ignores her concerns for his well-being.  It makes me sick.  _She_ walked out on _us!_ She's the one who never writes and forgets to visit.  She stood there and threatened to take him away from me, but did they take any notice of that?  No!  And now, thanks to her idiotic behaviour, he's going to have to put up with the same kind of publicity and hassle as I did when I was at school.  I've tried so hard to avoid that – it's one of the reasons we stayed abroad for so long."

"You can't shield him forever, Harry.  People are going to know whose son he is as he grows up and there's always going to be interest in the pair of you."

"I know that, but – why does she do it?" Harry asked plaintively.  "She can't seriously think she can take him away from me, with her track record.  Even her own parents wouldn't support her."

"I don't suppose it has anything to do with that," Hermione told him bluntly.

"Then what?"

"Well … granted I haven't met her, and all I know is what you've told me and the drivel I've read in the _Prophet_ , but – at a guess, I'd say she's trying to get your attention."

Harry stared at her.  "You must be joking."

Hermione smiled.  "You must still be as hopeless with women as you were when you were a teenager, if you can ask me that!"

"She's not interested in me, Hermione!  She left me because she said I was boring!"

She successfully managed to suppress a laugh at this.  "Well, from what you tell me, you did lead a rather exciting life when she first met you, but that all but stopped when she became pregnant.  And you're a devoted father, Harry.  Maybe you paid more attention to Sirius when he arrived than you did to her?"

He looked bewildered.  "He's my son!  Of course I paid attention to him.  And we could hardly have continued racketing around Europe like that with a baby in tow!"

"And you had no parents of your own, so I expect you were determined he should have a better life than you did," she pointed out gently.  "I'm saying that perhaps you overcompensated, Harry.  I'm not criticising you but if she's the kind of woman who expects a lot of attention, she might not have taken very kindly to sharing you or to the sudden change in her lifestyle."

Harry took an agitated turn around the kitchen.

"That still doesn't explain why she's trying to get my attention now," he pointed out.

"I can't explain that without knowing her better.  But you told me she's talked about getting married before and hasn't actually gone through with it.  Well, you only make a point of telling your ex-partner you're getting married when you want him to be jealous.  And since she must know perfectly well that she can't really interfere in Sirius's life without your permission, I'd say that's just another way of trying to get your attention, too."  Hermione shrugged.  "Perhaps she doesn't even realise she's doing it.  It wouldn't surprise me."

Fortunately, Sirius wandered into the kitchen then.

"Are we going to have dinner?" he asked, as though he hadn't just been treated to the sight of his mother behaving like a B-list actress in a national newspaper.  "I'm starving.  Can we have spaghetti?"

"Sirius …." Harry said, at a loss.

The boy leaned bony elbows on the table, looking at his father matter-of-factly. 

"It's just _Maman_ ," he said.  "I know she does stupid stuff, but it doesn't matter because she always goes away again."

Hermione hid a smile at his pragmatic tone.

"Yes, but this time people are going to be talking about it at school," Harry pointed out.  "It's going to be pretty horrible for you."

Sirius shrugged.  "I'll just tell them she's lying.  That's true, isn't it?"

"It doesn't look good though, sweetie," Hermione suggested.  "She is your mum, after all."

"She's never around," the boy replied, unimpressed.  "She only turns up sometimes because she's scared she'll look bad.  I heard _Grand-père_ say so to _Oncle_ Arnaud before we left Provence last year."

"Sirius!" Harry protested.  "Whatever you or I think of her, she's still your mother!"

"Well, it's true," Sirius grumbled.  "And she called me Yves and _petit chou_.  I hate it when she does that."

"That _is_ pretty rotten," Hermione admitted.

"Yeah, it is.  Now can we have dinner?" he asked again plaintively.

Harry studied him for a moment and shook his head ruefully. 

"All right then.  Spaghetti it is."

 

*

 

Platform Nine and Three Quarters was heaving with people. 

Harry wasn't alone in putting his son on the Hogwarts Express that day; Ron was seeing Marius and Walter off for their sixth year, and Ginny had turned up with her ex-husband to put their eldest boy, Rudi, on the train for the first time.  Harry made sure Sirius's trunk was safely stowed in the carriage he was sharing with his friends, then gave the boy a bone-crushing hug.

"I want to hear from you once a week, okay?"

"Yep."

"And you'll come home for Christmas."

Sirius tilted his head back to look at his father.  "Are you staying in England then?"

Harry looked back at him and the corner of his mouth twitched.  "I think so."

"But what are you going to do while I'm at school?"

"I'm going to look for a proper house for us, for a start.  What do you think?

"Cool!"

"Get on board now, Squirt.  The train's about to go."

Sirius scrambled into his carriage and pulled the door shut.  It was a bit of a squeeze, considering that Tedjminder, Noah and Tobias were all trying to lean out of the open window too, but he managed to hang his head out.

"I'm glad we're staying, Dad," he yelled. "I like - " 

But the rest of his words were lost in the whistle and slow chug of the engine beginning to move and a cacophony of yells from its passengers and the parents left behind.  Harry gave up trying to work out what Sirius was saying and contented himself with waving goodbye.

When the train was finally disappearing into the distance, people on the platform began to slowly disperse, in twos and threes, out of the hidden gateway onto Kings Cross Station.  Harry found himself drifting in that direction with Ron, feeling rather at a loss now that Sirius's energetic presence was missing.  Even the previous year he'd had somewhere else to be after he'd seen the boy off.  This year, for the time being at least, he was completely unengaged and it was a distinctly odd feeling.

"So," Ron said, as they approached the barrier.  "What are you up to now?"

"Um … house hunting, I suppose.  For somewhere more permanent."

"If you've got to get out of that rented place a bit quick, you know you can always come and stay with me."

"I've got a few weeks grace, but I'll bear that in mind.  Thanks, Ron."

The guard was waving them through the barrier, so they ducked through the wall and emerged onto another, equally busy platform.

"I've got a meeting with my boss after lunch," Ron said, consulting his pocket watch, "but I'm free till then.  Want to get a coffee?"

"I said I'd meet Hermione for lunch in The Leaky Cauldron.  Why don't you join us?"

"Works for me," his friend said agreeably.

They followed the flow of Muggle travellers into the Underground and found a convenient but little-used back stair where they could Apparate safely without being seen.  ("Dad says the Muggles have a problem with terrorists putting explosives in places like this," Ron commented, just before they did so.  "Why do you reckon they leave them open to people if that's the case?"  "Believe me," Harry replied dryly, "we haven't gone entirely unnoticed.  Somewhere out there is a very puzzled Muggle watching his security cameras and wondering how we just managed to disappear in full view.")

Charing Cross Road was almost as busy as the station had been, but they weren't in any great hurry.

"Has Hermione said how long she's going to hang around this time?" Ron asked, as they dawdled.

"No – I've been wondering that myself," Harry admitted.  "To listen to her, I'd say she's got all sorts of projects on the go, but she doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave."

"She'll just up and go one day," Ron predicted.  "That's what she usually does, anyway.  Still, it's been good to see her."

His tone was affectionate, but in the same off-handed friendly way Harry remembered from just before he left England when he was nineteen.  There had been a brief period – roughly during their last three or four years at school – when it had been different, and for a while it had seemed like Ron and Hermione might defy the sceptics and get together properly.  One doped-up night between Harry and Ron had seemed to end it before it had properly begun, although according to Ron now that wasn't the case at all.

Harry couldn't resist prodding at it a little, like a wobbly tooth.

"Have I been in the way while she's been here?"

Ron gave him a cockeyed look.  "You're joking, right?  If there'd been anything like that going on, it would have been me she was staying with, not you."

"I think that would have got your mum a bit overexcited."

Ron's smile at this was less than humorous.  "She'd be getting overexcited anyway.  As it is, she's probably telling all her friends how _wonderful_ it is that Hermione gets on so well with your Sirius, and what a fantastic stepmother she'd make.  Because a nipper like Sirius must be in desperate need of mothering – "

Harry chuckled.  "She should talk to Sirius about that first!  The mother he's got drives us both up the wall."

"I'll bet.  Is she still around or has she gone again?"

Harry shot him a grin.  "Why?  Do you want an introduction?"

"I don't reckon I'm her sort!" Ron said, with a snort.

"You'd be surprised.  She puts on all the airs and graces now, but she was nothing like as fussy when I first met her."

"Where _did_ you meet her?" Ron asked curiously.

Harry grinned.  "We happened to be staying in the same ratty hotel in Portugal when there was an unexpected storm and it triggered a mudslide on the hill behind.  The whole place was engulfed – we got out with our wands and the clothes we stood up in.  _She'd_ left all her money in the hotel safe, but I had about ten Portuguese Anchors and a handful of Muggle Euros in my jeans pocket.  I managed to find us a single room for the night at a nearby farmhouse, but only after I'd sworn to the owners that Cleone was my wife and she'd lost her wedding ring in the accident.  And that was just the start of a very lively trip.  I'm still not sure why she decided to tag along with me.  I was working for an organisation that tracked down people who went missing during the war, so I was travelling all over the place – some days I'd have to find a room in a Muggle hostel or hotel for a night or two while others, I'd land up in a big city and be put up by the local Ministry office.  It was quite literally one night in a room over a cowshed followed by the next in five star embassy lodgings.  Maybe it was the adventure that did it for her?  I don't know."

"Do you still do that?" Ron asked, really more interested in this titbit of information about Harry's post-war activities.  "Hunt down missing people?"

"On and off.  I was briefly dragged into hunting renegade Death Eaters as well, but I didn't like the work – too much like the war again and brought up too many bad memories.  I've done other stuff – it was wizard community relocation work this past year.  The funny thing is that Hermione's worked for the Wizard Relocation Agency too.  There must have been several occasions when we were practically in the same building at the same time, but somehow never met.  How weird is that?"

"Sounds exciting," Ron remarked, a little wistfully.  "All that going on while I've been stuck at home making brooms …."

Harry shot him a startled look.  "But you love making brooms."

"Well yeah, but it's not exactly the stuff novels are written about, is it?"

"There have been times when I would much rather have had your life," Harry told him.  "I haven't been doing this stuff out of a love of adventure, you know.  A lot of the charity work was done because …." 

He stopped. 

"Because?" Ron prompted after a moment.

"Because I promised Tenlieng I would," Harry finished, with a sigh. 

"That's the old bloke you stayed with in Nepal?"

"Yeah.  I spent a year with him and a lot of things came out while I was there.  Stuff about Voldemort … Dumbledore … Sirius.  Stuff about me, you and Hermione," Harry admitted reluctantly.  "And there was the whole drugs thing.  Tenlieng's philosophy is that you can't undo what's been done, but you can balance it out.  So I promised I would do work that would balance out what I did in the war."

Ron stared at him, almost coming to a halt in the middle of the street.  "Harry - for heaven's sake, mate, how could what you did in the war possibly need _balancing out?_ "

Harry raised a brow.  "I killed people, Ron."

"Death Eaters!  And Voldemort!"

"And how did that make me any better than them?"

"You didn't have a choice!" Ron protested.

"Actually, I did on several occasions.  But I acted on the advice of people around me and in Tenlieng's opinion, while I was right to take that advice into consideration, I should ultimately have acted on my own best judgement."

"For crying out loud - you were a _teenager_.  You weren't in any position - "

"From the moment I reached seventeen I was, Ron.  Nobody was responsible for me once I reached my wizard majority.  Look - this isn't the time or place to have this conversation.  Let's just get lunch."

But Ron wasn't ready to abandon the conversation and as soon as they located Hermione, who was tucked away at a corner table in The Leaky Cauldron, he said to her, "Do you know what this idiot's been telling me?"

"Since I haven't developed telepathy since the last time we met, probably not," Hermione said dryly.  She glanced around, and added, "If you're going to be rude about Harry, at least keep your voice down.  He's had enough trouble with the press this week, don't you think?"

Ron lowered his voice, but didn't stop.  "He's spent the last twenty years - "

"More like sixteen, actually," Harry put in irritably.

" - Atoning for his wartime sins," Ron finished, quite outraged.

Hermione hesitated, looking between the two of them.  "Really?"

"Well, you could look at it like that," Harry said, picking up a menu and disappearing behind it.

It was oddly like one of their old common room arguments, listening to his friend muttering the whole story to Hermione and demanding her opinion.  At the end of it, Hermione looked at Harry thoughtfully.

"You spent a year in Nepal with him?"

"Roughly," Harry replied.  "He was the village elder - everybody went to him for advice."

Hermione traced a pattern in the wooden tabletop with her finger for a moment.

"Harry … I don't know what you told him, of course, or what he told you, but … you do realise that there was no other choice than to kill Voldemort, don't you?"

Harry sighed and put the menu down.  "Yes, I do.  _But_.  What Tenlieng told me was that even if I had no choice, it doesn't change the fact that killing someone is a terrible thing and no matter how righteous I was, it did something to me as a person.  It's a - a blemish on my soul, for want of a better term.  And Voldemort wasn't the only terrible thing I did during the war, or afterwards.  By the time I reached Nepal I had a lot of stuff on my conscience, so to speak, and although I kicked the drugs and cleaned myself up superficially, Tenlieng told me I'd never be wholly right again as a person until I'd balanced out what I'd done.  Hence the charity work.  Now - can we please order?"

Ron looked meaningfully at Hermione, but she shook her head at him a little and tapped his menu with her finger.

"Order, Ron."

The atmosphere had become a little tense.  One of the waiters quickly took their order and there was an uneasy silence until their meals arrived.  Finally, Hermione broke it determinedly.

"So now that Sirius has gone back to school, what are you going to do, Harry?"

"Find a house," Harry replied, relieved at the change of subject.  "I think I'm going to base myself in England now, at least while Sirius is at Hogwarts.  I can still do my work this way, but there's no reason for the two of us to be living out of trunks and putting stuff into storage all the while."

"I shouldn't have to say this, you know," she remarked, pausing with her fork in mid-air, "but you already have a house."

Harry stirred his soup with his spoon, hesitating.

"It was pretty well cleared out after you left," Ron added, in a calmer tone than he had used a short while before.  "Remus put covers over anything left."

"Grimmauld Place was part of the Black estate," Harry said levelly.  "I should think that in the absence of another Black, it really belongs to Draco Malfoy."

"He's been in St. Mungo's since the war," Hermione told him.  "He won't be coming out, any more than Neville's parents will.  Besides, if the house had devolved to the remaining Blacks, it would have gone to Tonks first.  Since Remus has custody of the deeds, it obviously wasn't entailed and in that case it belongs to you as Sirius's heir."

"Why did Remus move out?" Harry asked, stalling a little.

"Too many bad memories, I should think," Ron replied with a shrug.

"And I don't have?"

"You're not Remus," Hermione pointed out.  "Your connection to the house is different.  Harry, I know it was pretty horrible during the war, but it can't be much more than bare boards inside now.  It's a sizeable house, covered in protections - you could probably do it up really nicely."

Harry sighed.  "I don't know.  I don't know that it's a place where I want to raise my son, to be honest.  I think of that house and I think of how miserable Sirius was there before he died.  How depressing all the Order meetings were."  _How miserable I was just before I left there,_ he added silently.

"Well, whatever you do, I think you should go and view it," Hermione told him briskly, and she dug her fork into her casserole.  "If you're not going to live in it yourself, wouldn't it be best if you sold it?"

"True," Harry admitted. 

"You might change your mind once you've seen it.  Anyway, whatever you do, you'll have to do it with Ron if you want company and write to let me know what happens."

Ron had just been about to dig into his chicken and mushroom pie; he paused and rolled his eyes at Harry.

"Told you so!  She's disappearing again."

"Oh, I think the pair of you will manage well enough without me," she said dryly.

 


	6. Chapter 6

It was still there.

Well, of course it was, but it was still strange to see that dour old building standing there in the midst of a hotchpotch of other buildings, some of which were original, but many more of which had been torn down and rebuilt or altered until they looked entirely different.  The area had gone from being on the verge of a slum to a rather bohemian residential area; considerably tidier and more reputable than Harry remembered, but still far from upmarket.  He wondered if number twelve was somehow dragging down the market value of the other houses.  If it was, nobody currently living in Grimmauld Place seemed too concerned about it.

He could see the house, of course, for the Fidelius Charm had died with Dumbledore, but Muggles walked past the place as though it didn't exist.  Clearly the Muggle-repelling spells were still in good working order.

Harry sighed and set out across the little park area that had once been a scrubby patch of grass in front of the houses.  It wasn't like he could put it off anymore.  Coming here and then going away again without going into the house would look pretty stupid, especially as he had gone to all the trouble of visiting Remus Lupin beforehand, to make sure it was all right for him to do so.

All the same, it took a couple of deep breaths to get him up the steps to the door (still with its tarnished silver snake knocker), and a couple more before he could slip his wand out of his sleeve and tap it on the spot where the lock should have been.  Silently the door swung open.

And there was the hallway as it always had been, dark and smelling of age and stale air.  Harry stepped inside, suppressing a shudder as the door closed behind him.

 _"Lumos!"_

A faint hissing and the old gas lamps slowly brightened, producing the sickly insubstantial light that still tainted some of his nightmares.  Harry's jaw clenched as he looked around, but although the cobweb-festooned chandelier still hung overhead, the troll's foot umbrella stand was gone and where portraits had climbed the walls by the stairs there were only lighter square spots on the peeling paper. 

Where the painting of Mrs. Black had been was nothing but a large blackened patch.  Harry well remembered the day when one of the Muggleborn members of the Order had arrived with a blowtorch, the summer following Sirius's death.  The Permanent Sticking Charm had not been broken – but that only affected the back of the canvas.  So under the eyes of everyone else in the house, including Lupin who had stood halfway up the stairs watching, Harry had slowly but surely burned away the portrait as Sirius's mother screamed and screamed, unable to flee because every other picture had already been removed … even Phineas Nigellus.  In the end, nothing had been left but scorch marks on the wall.

It had been very cathartic.

Harry began to explore.  The old dining room on the ground floor had a long table and a set of twelve chairs, all under heavy covers, but the rugs had been taken up and any other furniture removed.  The kitchen also had a long table with a bench on either side of it.  The heavy iron pots and pans still hung from the ceiling, and Harry was mildly surprised to see a Black family dinner and tea service still sitting on the welsh dresser along with a row of silver goblets.

With no portraits to shriek insults at him, the only sound was the bare boards under his feet creaking as he slowly climbed the stairs.  The drawing room door stood open as he reached the first landing; Harry walked inside, remembering de-Doxying the curtains and emptying the cabinets.  No furniture remained today.  Even the carpet had been stripped from the floor and nothing was left but the peeling olive-green wallpaper – now more faded than ever, with great curls of it hanging loose – and another large bare patch on the wall where Tonks's mother Andromeda had finally succeeded in removing the Black family tree tapestry.  The long windows were thick with grime, filtering little light into the room.

There was a library/study opposite the drawing room, its dark leather chairs draped with holland covers and the bookshelves, still full, wreathed in preservation spells.  The windows had been blacked out since he'd last been in there, Harry noticed, presumably to prevent sun damage to delicate leather bindings.

The floors above held a couple of smaller sitting rooms, bedrooms, dressing rooms and bathrooms, and a sizeable linen closet.  Many of the bedrooms had been stripped, leaving nothing but empty wardrobes, chests of drawers and bare bedsteads.  The room he had once shared with Ron at the top of the house was completely empty.  So was old Mrs. Black's bedroom, where Sirius had kept Buckbeak the Hippogriff for a while, although the floorboards in there were still marked by the creature's talons.

But the little sitting rooms off the master and secondary bedrooms still contained furniture - overstuffed little chairs and small tables - under holland covers and although the rugs had been taken up, they were rolled up and wrapped in covers too, resting against the walls.  Here and there were large cardboard boxes that Harry decided not to investigate for the time being, but which probably contained any smaller objects that hadn't been claimed by anyone before Remus closed up the house.

Eventually Harry came to a room where the door was locked when he hesitantly tried the handle.  It had been locked the last time he saw it, too.

This was the room Sirius Black had occupied.  It was one of a pair sharing a bathroom and small sitting room; the other room, which Harry had already walked through and that was empty except for the bedstead and wardrobe, had been used by Lupin while he lived at Grimmauld Place.  But the doors into Sirius's room were all locked - had been locked, so far as Harry knew, ever since his godfather died.  Ron had told him, when he first returned to the house a month after Sirius's death, that Lupin refused to touch his friend's room and no one else, not even Molly Weasley, had dared. 

Given the overall bareness of the house now, Harry found himself stalling outside this locked door.  Even after twenty-five years - perhaps _especially_ after twenty-five years - he wasn't sure if he was ready to open it and discover that the room was exactly as Sirius had left it, the day he had rushed off to rescue Harry and the others at the Ministry of Magic.  For several moments his imagination taunted him with visions of a rumpled, unmade bed and casually discarded clothing, of toiletries and knickknacks on a dressing table and shoes under a chair, all waiting for their owner to return.  The hair came up on the back of Harry's neck, and he was acutely aware of the shadows in this abandoned house and the expectant silence.

"Stupid!" he said out loud, very firmly.  If he was planning to live in this house with his son, he couldn't afford to balk at locked doors, no matter how painful the memories.  Sirius-the-younger certainly wouldn't hesitate to investigate when he came home and Harry didn't want to find out what was in there that way.  He tapped the lock with his wand.  _"Alohomora!"_

The door swung gently open.

 

*

 

"Harry?"

Harry nearly leapt out of his skin.  " _Shit!_   Don't do that to me, Ron!"

The redhead was leaning in through the door, grinning at him. 

"Serves you right for leaving the front door unlocked, you prat!"  He strolled inside, looking around with interest.  "So Remus _did_ clear this room after all.  I always wondered."

"Only up to a point," Harry said, surveying the trunks stacked up against the walls.  "He just packed Sirius's stuff away and left it here."

"Well, it belongs to you," Ron pointed out.  "He probably thought he shouldn't get rid of anything until you had a chance to look over it."

"Yes, but _everything_ is here, including all sorts of school mementoes that are really his by right.  And he could have taken any of it, he knows that," Harry replied.  For a moment his mouth twisted wryly.  "But of course - he's Remus.  He wouldn't, would he?"

"And maybe he didn't want anything," said Ron.  "It's not like he really needs things to remind him, after all.  He's got the best memory of anyone I know and there's nothing like a little grief to fix things in your mind."

He had a point there, Harry admitted to himself.

"Some people like reminders hanging around," his friend continued, suddenly sounding uncomfortable.  "But sometimes it's easier to put the person away - you know?"

Treading cautiously (for he was pretty sure this had something to do with Luna) Harry said, "I don't see it quite that way, mate.  I like the reminders - I've lost too many people without ever knowing enough about them.  Having something solid to connect to them helps."

"Well that makes sense," Ron agreed.  "For you, anyway."

"Yeah, I know; I'm not kicking at Remus for reacting differently.  Hopefully, I've grown out of any nasty little habits like that.  It was just …."  Harry rubbed his chin uncomfortably.  "It was a bit of a shock finding all Sirius's clothes in here.  Although I was half-expecting to find the place exactly as he left it, so it could have been worse."

"That would have been pretty creepy after all these years."

"Tell me about it."  Harry watched Ron trying to polish a clear spot on one of the windows with the sleeve of his robe.  "What are you doing here anyway?  It's the middle of the day - don't you work or something?"

Ron glanced back at him, grinning.  "I have pretty flexible hours."  He gave up on the window and turned back to Harry, digging his hands into his pockets.  "So what do you think?  Will you do this place up or sell it?"

"I don't know.  Part of me would love to get rid of it, but …."

"But what?"

"Selling it would probably take months, and without doing it up it won't fetch much," Harry said.  "In the meantime, I don't have enough available capital to buy a house outright and without a steady job I doubt Gringotts would give me a loan or mortgage.  Besides, if I'm going to do this place up to sell, I might as well do a proper job and live in it."

"I always thought you were rolling in money," Ron said, surprised.  "You inherited a fortune from your parents and then you got Sirius's pile as well."

Harry gave him a crooked smile.  "What do you think I've been living off all these years?"

"Oh."

Harry grinned.  "Actually, it's not as bad as all that.  Some of the jobs I've done have been paid.  My capital is what's left of my parents' legacy, and a fair chunk of that I put away for Sirius when he's older, but Sirius - _our_ Sirius - left his money set up so that I couldn't touch it.  I get a monthly allowance, if you can believe that."

Ron stared, and then scoffed.  "Sirius did _not_ do that!  Not off his own bat, anyway - it's totally unlike him."

"I queried it with Gringotts.  Apparently it's a common arrangement in the pureblood families and in fact that's how he received the money too, from his Uncle Alphard.  But as far as capital's concerned, it's not that I don't have the money to buy a house - it's Gringotts' rules about withdrawals.  Since Voldemort, they've brought in rules to stop people emptying their vaults at the drop of a hat, because everyone panicked during the war and nearly destabilised the economy by trying to hide their money under the mattress instead."

"That's a pain," Ron commented.  He wandered slowly back across the room.  "Well, if you want my opinion, mate, I think you should do this place up.  You've always got the option of selling it later if you really can't stick living here."

Harry glanced around doubtfully.  "Yes … but it's going to be a hell of a lot of work.  The fabric seems sound, but it's a big house."

"I'll give you a hand," his friend offered.

"Ron, you have a job to do - "

"I don't mind helping out my old mate Harry in my spare time.  Besides, you're going to be helping _me_ out too, aren't you?"

Harry raised his brows.  "I am?"

Ron grinned at him.  "Yeah - broom testing, remember?"

 

*

 

It only occurred to Harry after he got started on the house that he had until the end of September to make it fit enough for him to live in, and until Christmas week to make it fit for his son to live in.  December was light-years away only if one was twelve; in adult terms, it was just around the corner.  Getting number twelve Grimmauld Place into any kind of shape was going to take hard work and a lot of optimism.

Ron was more practised at renovating than Harry expected.  Being a broomwright was seventy percent skilled manual work and of a kind that fitted a person out well for carpentry and other such jobs.  He also had practice; not only had he and Luna done up their house when they bought it, but over the years he had helped out various family members.  He was surprisingly organised, turning up on the first weekend armed with tape measures, parchment and quills.  The two of them spent a full day effectively surveying the house, then sat in The Leaky Cauldron afterwards planning their attack.

"Kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms first," Ron said firmly.  "You've got to be able to eat, sleep and wash.  We'll worry about the rest when you and Sirius have decent places to kip."

"I'm not arguing," Harry said amiably.  Actually, he was too tired; there had been no stopping Ron once he got started.  "We need to get the water supply sorted out before we do anything else, I should think, and if it's at all possible I want to get rid of the current lighting.  It's like something out of a Muggle horror movie in there _._   We need to get the Floo reconnected too."

"Talk to Dad about the Floo and the water supply," Ron advised him.  "He still has useful contacts in the Ministry for stuff like that."  He was jotting notes on his parchment, doing calculations.  "You're not planning to knock down any internal walls or anything like that, are you?"

"Don't think so.  Why?"

"Anything like that'll crank up the time all this'll take to do."  Ron made some more notes.  "I'm trying to work out how many tins of paint and rolls of wallpaper you're going to need.  We can leave the carpets until the decorating's done and besides – the drawing room at least has a decent hardwood floor.  You might be able to re-polish it and chuck a few rugs down instead.  I was looking at one of the ones rolled up in the sitting room off Sirius's old bedroom and it's not half-bad.  Nineteenth century elf-weave – I saw one in an antiques shop five years ago.  If you don't like it, you should flog it.  I can think of a few people who'd sell granny's jewels to pay for it, you can't buy elf-weave for love or money these days."

Harry sat back and regarded his friend with a sudden surge of affection.  In all the essentials, Ron remained exactly the same; he was more mature and his familiar personality sometimes manifested itself in unfamiliar ways, but he was still Ron Weasley, the decent, dependable bloke who was always there for his friends and family.

 _Thank God,_ Harry thought fervently.

Ron happened to look up then, saw Harry's expression and gave him a bemused look.

"What?"

"Nothing!" Harry replied happily.

 

*

 

"Why – if it isn't our baby brother," George Weasley remarked amiably, when Ron walked into their kitchen just as the family were sitting down to dinner. 

"I've forgotten what he looks like," Fred remarked.  "Remind me?"

"Tall bloke, red hair, freckles, answers to 'Ickle Ronnikins'?"

"Ah yeah, that'd be the one."

"You're funny," Ron said dryly as he dropped into a spare chair and ruffled the hair of his nearest nephew.  "No, Kate – sit down," he added when his sister-in-law would have jumped up to get another plate.  "I'm fine, really, this is just a flying visit."

"Yeah, I noticed we never see you anymore," Fred said. 

Ron gave him a blank look.  "Eh?"

"They're winding you up, Ron," Kate said.  "Don't tease him, Fred, or he'll stop visiting you as well as your mum."

"We'll bear that in mind," George replied with an evil grin.  "Could come in handy ….  How _is_ your love-life, little brother?"

Ron ignored this.  "Do you jokers still have my pasting table and brushes?" he asked.  "I'm helping Harry to fix up Grimmauld Place and – "

"Grimmauld Place?" Fred interrupted, staring.  "What's he want with that mouldy old heap?"

"He already owns it, so it won't cost him anything," Ron said impatiently.  "Look, do you have my stuff?  I don't want to be rude but Gareth's due home in an hour, so I don't have a lot of time."

"Stuff's out in the shed," George replied.  "I'll get it for you in a minute.  Sit down and have a cup of tea, will you?  Relax.  Gareth's eighteen – he can let himself into the house without you hovering."

"It's my night to make dinner."

"So?  Pick up a take-away curry on the way home for once."

"And I have somewhere else to be later this evening," Ron said, exasperated.

"Ooh!  He's got a date," Fred crowed.  "Call Mum!"

"Go ahead, if you want egg on your faces.  I don't call meeting a bunch of blokes I work with 'a date'," Ron retorted.

"More like an orgy," George agreed.

"Not in front of the kids!" Kate protested.

"What's an orgy, Dad?"

Ron chuckled and stood up.  "I'll get the gear myself and if you've jinxed anything, you'll pay for the damage."

Kate insisted on following him out into the garden, in case he needed help.

"I'm sorry, Ron, you know what they're like …."

"Better than you, probably!  Don't fret – I'd worry if they _weren't_ taking the piss out of me."  Ron glanced at her as he switched the shed lights on.  "You look dead tired," he commented.  "Kids getting you down?"

Kate was considerably younger than the twins, only in her early twenties, with shoulder-length mousy hair and warm brown eyes.  She was a pretty girl without being stunningly beautiful, and had a very sweet personality that was nevertheless nothing out of the ordinary.  Ron liked her and frequently felt sorry for her, but for the life of him he couldn't understand why Fred and George had suddenly decided to set up house with her.  He wouldn't have understood it even had she been a witch; the fact that she was a Muggle made it all the more perplexing.

Kate was a stay-at-home mother through necessity; being a Muggle, she couldn't get work in the wizard world and besides, there wasn't much in the way of pre-school and preparatory school places for magical children.  Most were taught at home by their parents before they went to Hogwarts, or several families would club together for a tutor; George, Fred and Kate's oldest son, Ricky, shared a tutor with Ginny's sons at her house.  The other two, Scott and Lucas, were little more than toddlers.  Ron suspected that Kate got lonely, stuck at home all day with two pre-schoolers, as she found it difficult socialising with wizard families and didn't appear to have much contact with her own.

"Those two should take you away for a while," he told her kindly.  "You know you can always dump the kids with me for a few days."

For a moment he thought she might actually cry (a disturbing prospect for him even as an adult), but then she pulled herself together and gave him a determined smile.

"I'm fine, Ron, don't you worry about me.  Can you see what you're looking for?"

"Yep – I've got it."  He dragged the folded-up pasting table and bucket of brushes and scrapers out of a corner.  A quick tap of his wand and they were shrunk small enough to fit in his pockets. 

"Think about what I said," he told her as he switched the lights off and closed the shed up again.  "You should get out more, at least.  I'll take you and the kids to see Harry's house sometime, what do you think?"

Kate demurred and, not for the first time, Ron was left silently fuming at his brothers' lack of consideration for her.

When he returned to the house in her wake, George was waiting for him in the doorway.

"Come into the sitting room for a minute," his brother said in an amiable tone that in no way covered the determined set to his mouth.

"I told you, I'm in a hurry – "

"That can wait."

Growing more annoyed by the minute, Ron followed him into the little sitting room at the front of the house.  It was clean, but rather untidy; the children's toys and books were spread across the floor and a pile of magazines and newspapers beside the sofa had tumbled over.  Having raised three energetic boys himself, Ron disregarded the clutter, recognising everything but the pile of magazines to be one day's mess in a family with three children under the age of six.

Pushing the door shut behind him, he said, "So?"

"Sit down, will you?" George told him impatiently.

"No thanks.  What's on your mind?"

George dug his hands into his pockets, frowning at him for a moment. 

"Tell me something, little brother," he said eventually.  "Harry Potter disappears after the war without a word to anyone and no one gets so much as a postcard from him for twenty years.  For all we knew, he could have been dead.  Then one day he turns up again and _you_ welcome him back with open arms and no questions.  Tell me, what's wrong with this picture?"

Ron raised his brows.  "Why don't you tell me?"

"Why aren't you pissed off with him?"

"Why _would_ I be pissed off with him?" Ron asked blankly.

They stared at each other, both equally perplexed.

"Where was he when Hermione buggered off too?" George said, trying a different tack.  "Where was he when you got married, when your kids were born and when your wife died?  He was _supposed_ to be your best mate!  So where the hell was he when you needed him?"

Ah.  Ron scratched his nose thoughtfully for a moment, then said calmly, "Where were we when he needed us?"

"What?"

"For eight years he got tossed around like a Quaffle between Voldemort and Dumbledore, and for most of that time and ten years before he got treated like shit by his Muggle relatives.  He got treated like shit by our Ministry, treated like shit by some of our teachers, and treated like shit by our newspapers.  Then he killed Voldemort – and in case you've forgotten, most people didn't think he'd survive that – and then what happened?"

George was silent.

"I'll remind you, shall I?  After Harry made a nice big splat of Voldemort, Dumbledore died of a heart attack, everyone congratulated the Minister on having got through a bit of a sticky patch in his career, and Harry got a pat on the back for being a jolly good sport.  There were a few articles in the _Prophet_ saying "Ooh, what will he do for an encore?" and then everyone got on with their lives.  Within a year they forgot about him."

Ron gave his brother a steady look.  "And you want to know why I'm not pissed off with him?  Well, why would I be, George?  He didn't leave without a word.  He told Hermione and me that he was going, even if he didn't say where or when he'd be back.  And I was sorry to see him go, but I didn't try to stop him.  I knew he'd come back when he was ready – and he has."

"Just like that?" George said incredulously.  "No apologies, no explanations?"

Ron gave him a look of weary annoyance.  "I didn't say that, did I?  Now, if you'll excuse me I've got somewhere else to be."

But he paused at the door, remembering something.  "George?"

"What?" George demanded irritably.

"A word of wisdom from one old married man to another - it's time you took Kate somewhere nice for a holiday."

Ron Disapparated.

 

*

 

Harry was sitting at the kitchen table, reading Sirius's first letter home, when Ron arrived at the rented house.

"What've you got there?" he asked, mildly surprised, when Ron un-shrank the contents of his pockets.

"Pasting table and brushes," Ron said briefly.  "We won't need them immediately, of course, but I thought I'd better grab them before Fred and George loaned them out to one of their mates.  Lee Jordan's always buying houses and fixing them up, and he's a bloody nuisance about bringing stuff back."

Harry had a sudden, weird flashback to his Uncle Vernon saying something similar about a friend of his.  The parallels between wizards and Muggles in their wildly different and yet oddly similar domesticities occasionally caught him like this. 

Then Ron ruined the illusion by adding, "I had to hex the git to get my Self-Calculating Slide-Rule back after George let him borrow it."

"There's tea in the pot," Harry told him, amused, and he turned back to his son's letter.

"That from Sirius?" Ron asked as he poured himself a cup and took a seat at the table.

"Yes … he's pretty good about writing, but I must remind him to send an occasional letter to his grandparents.  I don't want to give Cleone any opportunities to suggest I cut Sirius off from her family."

"I haven't heard from the twins yet – I'll probably have to send them a Howler first.  How's he getting on with that broom?"

"He says they have Quidditch try-outs next weekend and the team's looking for two Chasers – one left school last term and one's dropped out to concentrate on her NEWTs.  He's practising every evening and the broom's great."  Harry paused, his eyes scanning the slightly untidy sheet of parchment.  "He says Tedjminder tried it the other day and he was pretty nervous, but he liked it better than the other brooms he's tried."

"Ha!"  Ron looked pleased.  "I'll have to get started on a second prototype.  Might be difficult getting a similar branch for the handle, but I might be able to get around that by lathing it a bit differently to get a twist."

"They did mandrakes in Herbology last week and he broke two plant pots trying to re-pot one … Tobias lost them ten points in Astronomy when he hexed one of the Slytherins for tearing his star chart … Noah set his robe on fire in Potions and had to spend an afternoon with Madam Pomfrey … and they're planning to have a midnight feast in the dorm this weekend."

Ron was grinning.  "Sounds like a pretty average week to me."

"Yeah!"  Harry folded the letter up carefully and put it back into the envelope, to be replied to and stored with all Sirius's other letters in a safe place.  "I'm glad he's having fun," he remarked.  "I know we had some bad times while we were there, but generally speaking it was a lot of fun, wasn't it?  I want him to be happy there."

"I don't think you need to worry about that," his friend told him.  "Judging by what he said over the holiday, he had a wild time last year.  He'll be fine."

Harry drank down the last of his tea and went to rinse out his mug.  "So, what's the plan for this evening?"

"You come and meet a couple of my mates and have the unusual privilege of testing some new brooms for us.  Then we all go for a drink at The Leaky Cauldron.  Sound good?"

"Why do I get the feeling this'll end in saddle sores for me?"

"Do you good to toughen up your rear," Ron told him cheerfully.

 

*

 

 _Toughen up my rear,_ Harry thought grimly the next day, as he crawled achingly out of bed and into the shower.  _That's one way of putting it._

He'd been a little surprised at how easily all the old Quidditch moves had come back to him as he put no less than a dozen brooms, of varying makes and in varying stages of remodification, through their paces.  This had been interspersed by extended periods of sitting in mid-air while Ron and his cronies squabbled and made adjustments. 

By the time they'd made it to The Leaky Cauldron for the promised drink, his legs, back and rear were all numb, which had translated into uncomfortable stiffness overnight.  Riding a racing broom for any length of time took practice and (Harry suspected) the thoughtless youth he'd long since left behind.

Today he and Ron were going to start stripping down the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, a prospect which Harry's sore muscles were not looking forward to.  He suspected it was going to be a long, heavy, dirty job, although at least there would be someone congenial to share the work with.

He was lingering gloomily over his tea and toast when Ron appeared in the kitchen with a pop.  The redhead took one look at his face and began to laugh.

"Bastard," Harry said, although he couldn't help the corner of his mouth twitching.

"You look like you're sitting on a Knarl!" Ron chuckled.  He dug into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a round glass jar with a cork in the top, which he tossed to Harry.  "I thought your tender bits might be a bit sore this morning.  Rub a bit of that on - it's Bruise Balm."

Harry gave him a jaundiced look but stood up stiffly. 

"The problem with my _tender bits_ is they're a bit difficult to reach while I'm sore," he grumbled, but he headed for the kitchen door.

"Give me a yell if you need a hand," Ron said, amused, as he poured himself a cup of tea from the pot.

Harry raised a brow, but went off to the bathroom with the little jar.  As he cautiously peeled down his jeans and underwear and applied the tingling, mint-scented balm - with a few contortions that made him hiss in discomfort - he was almost tempted to take Ron up on the offer.

He wondered what his friend's reaction would be if he did.

He wondered if Ron was really only joking.

 _Stop that right now,_ he scolded himself, startled and annoyed at the turn his thoughts were taking.  Ron had been happily married for fifteen years and had given no indication that he was interested in moving on to _any_ new relationship, let alone one with another man.  It would be a pretty poor friend who put the moves on him under such circumstances, especially when he was already under pressure from his own mother.  And the last thing Harry wanted was to scare Ron off just when they were resurrecting their friendship so successfully.

 _The trouble with you,_ he told himself, as he pulled his clothes back on, _is that you've been single for too long.  You'll be humping the furniture next._  

 


	7. Chapter 7

The kitchen took two weeks of solid hard work from Harry, with assistance from Ron and his family at intervals.  About midway he privately despaired of ever making any headway with it, although once he'd scraped two hundred years' worth of soot off the ceiling, scoured the stone flags until they were a light grey again, and painted the walls and ceiling in a defiant cream, things began to look more hopeful.  Then the stove was installed, along with proper lighting, the high-set windows were cleaned to sparkling transparency, the scullery was transformed by a sink and laundry facilities that had a hope of being hygienic, and suddenly it all came together.

Halfway through the third week, Harry received notice from his current landlord that his lease was coming to an end.  Rather than waste money on renewing it or renting storage space, Harry and Ron enlisted the help of the twins and Ginny's husband, and moved his possessions to Grimmauld Place over the course of two days.  Harry was a little startled at how much he and Sirius had accumulated over time, but the majority fitted into the long, empty drawing room where it could safely be stored until the house was more liveable.

Harry camped out in the rental house for another five days, until one of the bathrooms at Grimmauld Place was rendered useable.  Then he handed his keys back to his landlord and moved to Grimmauld Place permanently.

It was a very strange experience.

Number twelve Grimmauld Place had been a dismal, rather scary place to stay when he was fifteen, but the creepiness of the house had been mitigated by the fact that a number of other people had been living there at the same time and members of the Order of the Phoenix had been coming and going at all hours.  The once or twice that Harry had woken during the night and crept down to the kitchen, there had always been someone there - sometimes Lupin or Kingsley Shacklebolt, but more often his godfather Sirius.

His first couple of nights on a camp-bed by the dining room fireplace (which had been designated the Floo point) were a little uneasy, listening to the old house settle and wondering if there were any hidden hexes left that the Order hadn't found years ago.  Ron had bluntly told him that he was nuts when there was a perfectly comfortable guest room at his house.  But Harry hadn't felt happy about that.  There was a small part of him that felt guilty about staying in Ron and Luna's house when he quite frequently entertained thoughts about Ron that wouldn't have been at all fair on Luna had she been alive.  More to the point, Harry thought it would be insane to spend so much time renovating Grimmauld Place if, at the end of it, he found he couldn't sleep there.

At least the house didn't seem to be haunted.  And after a few days Harry slept there quite untroubled.

The following Monday he started work on the bedroom he had picked out for Sirius.  It was entirely possible, of course, that Sirius would prefer a different room when he saw the house, but until then Harry bought paint and wallpaper in colours his son had expressed a preference for and enjoyed himself decorating it. 

At midmorning, he heard the bell that was attached to the Floo ring twice and a few minutes later Ron strolled into the room, carrying a redheaded toddler.  His sister-in-law Kate was behind him, with a slightly older boy clutching her hand.

"Hope you don't mind, mate," he said, "but George and Fred have taken off on a business trip for a few days and Kate's stuck at home with only the kids for company.  I brought them to see your house."

Kate was looking worn and anxious, and as Ron had already expressed his opinion of Fred and George's treatment of her, Harry was quick to put his brushes down and offer to make tea.  So they all went down to the kitchen, Kate struggling to control her son's enthusiasm to explore as they did so.

Ron had also been rather forceful in his opinion of how the twins raised their children; Kate tried hard to instil basic discipline, but was undermined by her husband and his brother at every turn, with the result that the eldest, Ricky, was - in Ron's words - "turning into a right little sod".  The other two, Lucas and Scott, were reasonably well-behaved in the presence of their uncle and Harry, but Harry got the impression from Kate's reaction that this was not the norm.

He felt sorry for her; she was too young and weak-willed to deal with men like Fred and George, and being a Muggle made things worse.  It wasn't hard to see why they had married her, though.  As Hermione, in her usual forceful and opinionated way, had said while was staying with him, it was clear that the twins had looked for a girl who would not only be the utter opposite of what their mother would consider 'suitable', but also as far from like her as it was possible to get.  The twins were not subtle men.

"Doesn't your own family help you out from time to time?" he asked her, during a break in the conversation while Ron took Lucas to find the bathroom.  "You look like you could do with some help."

Kate looked uncomfortable.  "I haven't seen any of them since I left home," she explained.  "We had a row and I left … and then I met Fred and George.  And I don't know how I'd explain all of this to them, so I just - I just haven't."

"All of this" presumably meant magic, and Harry could quite see her dilemma.  There were ways to deal with situations like this, though; the families of Muggleborn witches and wizards managed it all the time.

"But don't you miss them?" he asked, concerned.

There was a pause; she was chewing her lip.

"I miss my sister," she admitted finally.  "But I can't contact her, can I?  It's all such a mess." 

Because clearly she needed the support of someone outside the magical world.  With the best will in the world, the majority of wizards - particularly pureblood wizards like the Weasleys - did not really understand the problems of someone without magic and without a connection to or background in the magical world.  Even a Muggleborn witch or wizard was at a disadvantage.  Things that they quickly grew to take for granted remained a mystery to someone like Kate.

"The Muggle families of wizards and witches usually come up with reasonably convincing cover stories," he told her.  "Muggles are very good at rationalising things; you don't even have to be very specific, since generally speaking they come up with better explanations if you don't."

Kate looked doubtful.  "I don't know what I could say to them that would stop them overreacting."

"Your sister too?" Harry asked.

"I don't know …."

"If you're not going to tell them anything about magic - and it's probably better if you don't - then you need to come up with a story that they'll believe but not ask really difficult questions about."  Harry hesitated.  "They're not religious, are they?"

That brought a sudden grin to her face.  "Not likely!"

"What do they do?"

"Dad's a bank manager and Mum doesn't work."

"A bit middle class?  Reads the _Daily Mail?_ " he asked, grinning back.

"How did you guess?"

"I have an aunt and uncle who are the same.  Okay - if they're like that, you don't want to tell them you've joined a new religion.  They might think you've been sucked in by the Moonies and try to de-programme you for your own good." 

Kate giggled weakly at this.  Harry tapped his fingers on the table top for a moment, then had a sudden brainwave. 

"How do they feel about New Age travellers?"

Her face flashed into laughter again.  "Dad always says they should be locked up …."

"Good.  You could tell them you've joined a New Age commune in somewhere like Wales or Scotland.  If you dress a bit hippy-ish they're more likely to believe you.  And if they ever accidentally meet Fred or George - God forbid! - or the kids say something a bit odd, you can explain it away more easily."

He could tell from her expression that the idea had taken root.

"Personally, I'd contact your sister first, if you can," he suggested.  "If you got on well with her before you left, she's more likely to be open to seeing you again.  And I know it doesn't seem like it, but it _is_ occasionally possible to introduce a receptive family member to our world.  It just has to be very carefully done.  The most important thing is that our world isn't exposed, though, so for the time being - remember you're a hippy in a commune."

He would have said more, but Ron returned with Lucas then and the conversation was abandoned in favour of exploring the contents of Harry's biscuit barrel.

 

*

 

By the middle of November, Harry (with assistance from various people) had completed the kitchen, Sirius's room, his own room, two guest bedrooms, three bathrooms and the dining room, all except for carpets.  The house was five storeys inside and in order to lessen his headache he decided to simply ignore the top floor and attics until a much later date, when he had the time, energy and need to deal with them.  It was work enough trying to sort out the other floors, and even then some rooms (notably the suite Remus Lupin had shared with Sirius Black, and old Mrs. Black's room) he simply left shut for later consideration.

The worst parts left to do were undoubtedly the drawing room, staircases and passages.   Had it just been himself and Sirius there for Christmas, Harry wouldn't have worried about this so much, but a letter from his son the second week into November asked if Tedjminder could stay with them over the holiday. The boy's parents had returned to India and as both Noah and Tobias were also going home for Christmas, he would otherwise be left in Gryffindor virtually on his own.




"I don't know what you're worrying about," Ron told Harry, amused, as they undercoated the woodwork on the second floor landing.  "They aren't going to care if it's finished or not.  In fact, they'll probably prefer it if it isn't - more fun that way.  You'll have a hard time keeping the pair of them out of the top floor and attics as it is."

"I'll have to spell the attics shut," Harry replied.  "There's a lot of stuff in them that I'm not too sure about.  Remus stored some of the smaller pieces of furniture up there before he left, but there are a load of trunks and boxes at the back that I don't recognise and look like they've been there a lot longer.  God only knows how dangerous the stuff inside them is."

"Bill's home again for the holiday.  Why don't you ask him to help you check them out?  Remus too, maybe."

"That's an idea.  I was thinking of inviting Remus for Christmas anyway, for dinner and maybe to stay for a couple of days - do you think he'd come? "

"You can ask him," Ron said, "but Mum's asked him every year since you left and he's said no.  I don't know if he spends it on his own or goes somewhere.  Whatever happens, you and the kids are coming to me for dinner on Boxing Day, and Remus too if he's with you."

"In that case, you're coming to us for tea on Christmas Day," Harry countered.

"Can't - we're pretty much obliged to have tea with Mum on Christmas Day.  She'll probably invite you too."

"You can have dinner with us on New Year's Day then."

"Done!"

"What does Hermione do for Christmas?" Harry asked, as he levered the lid off another pot of pale yellow undercoat.  The woodwork on the stairs and landings was going to be a light straw colour; something, Harry said, that would be a complete change from the muddy brown shades the house had been painted in previously.

"Spends it with her parents."  Ron charmed a spare paintbrush to work on the skirting boards while he managed the fiddly upright posts of the banister rail.  "They usually go somewhere - Switzerland or Austria.  Skiing, she says."

"Cleone and I did that when Sirius was just starting to walk," Harry remarked, and he made a face at the memory.  "I may be able to fly a broom, but I'm hopeless on skis.  I spent most of my time in the lodge, looking after Sirius, while she was out on the slopes.  She met the bloke she went off with there."

"There's a couple of excellent reasons not to strap a pair of planks to your feet," Ron observed.

"I think I got the better end of the deal."

"I think you did too."

They continued painting in amicable silence for a while.  Harry couldn't help thinking that this was all rather satisfying; spending time with his best friend, doing something worthwhile.  There was a fierce sense of satisfaction just in knowing that they were transforming the house that had oppressed his godfather, and that had been a symbol of everything Sirius Black had hated, from a grim mausoleum into a warm and welcoming family home.

Ron was evidently thinking something similar, for he suddenly sat back on the top stair and said, "You know, I reckon this place is going to really be something when we're finished!  Who'd have thought it?"

"I was surprised how much difference it made just cleaning the ceilings," Harry replied.  "There must have been decades worth of candle-soot."

"What kind of lighting are you going to use when we're finished?"

"The same as we're using now - fixed wand-light."  This was a reference to the small, concentrated balls of blue-white light floating near the ceiling; an advanced form of the basic _lumos_ spell.  "I saw some nice brass lamps in one of the shops in Diagon Alley - I can suspend them from the chandelier hooks and put the lights inside them."

"Sounds good.  Are you still hoping to fix the drawing room by Christmas as well?"

"I'd like to," Harry said.  "I could probably fit a tree in the entrance hall, but there's not much room there really.  Besides, the kids could do with something better than the dining room or bedrooms to mess about in.  The library's okay, but it's not the kind of place boys Sirius's age want to hang around in and I don't see myself spending a lot of time in there either, to be honest."

"What _are_ you going to do with yourself, when you've finished doing this place up?" Ron asked curiously.

Which was a very good question.

"I'll think of something," Harry said.

 

*

 

At Ron's advice, Harry abandoned trying to finish all the stairs and passages in favour of sorting out the drawing room first.  This should have been a fairly straightforward job, painting the ceilings and woodwork and papering the walls.  Unfortunately, the walls had other ideas.

The two of them were trying to wrestle a long strip of paper onto one wall – without much success –when a quiet voice said, "You've certainly made a big difference here, Harry."

Harry jumped, Ron cursed, and the paper slipped.  The intruder ended up helping to unwrap them from the damp, sticky sheet, apologising profusely.

"No, Remus, it's not your fault," Harry said with a sigh, as the ruined length of paper was consigned to a heap of similar rejects.  "I don't know what it is with this room, but it just doesn't want to be decorated."

"Not entirely surprising," Lupin remarked, glancing around.  "This was old Mrs. Black's favourite room.  And wizard houses do sometimes develop personalities over time, you know.  We may have subdued the rest of the house before I closed it up, but this room was always a problem ….  I don't like to think what Andromeda had to do to loosen that old tapestry, for a start."

"Great," Ron muttered.  "Bang goes the plan to have this place in order for Christmas."

"Oh, I don't know.  Perhaps your brother Bill could help out?"

"I was going to ask him here _after_ Christmas," Harry said.  "There's some rubbish up in the attics I was hoping you and he could help me investigate.  But I did want this room fixed so I could have a tree up when Sirius and Tedjminder arrive."

"In that case …."  Lupin took off his cloak and rolled up his sleeves.  "I won't be beaten by Mrs. Black.  Paste up some more paper."

The three of them spent the whole afternoon fighting the wallpaper.  It refused to stick, although in some places this didn't become obvious for nearly an hour after they'd hung it, when it would suddenly and very ominously begin to bubble up or peel.  Ron finally took a step back, wiping sweat and traces of paste from his face and hands, and shook his head, baffled.

"The place couldn't have a poltergeist, could it?  Because some of this reminds me a bit of Peeves."

"We never found any traces of ghosts or other supernaturals in this house," Lupin replied, looking around.  "Sirius told me he never saw any spectral activity whatsoever when he was a boy – anything odd going on was almost certainly at his mother's behest.  Besides, having Kreacher lurking around the house was unpleasant enough.  But as I said, wizard houses _do_ sometimes develop a kind of personality, for want of a better word.  And if any room was going to resist change, it would be this one."

"Suggestions?" Harry asked wearily.

"We may have to resort to Permanent Sticking Charms," Lupin said, grimacing.  "A nuisance.  If you ever want to decorate in here again, you'll have to either scour this paper off or paper over it.  But it could be worse."

"Well, we've spent all day on this.  I vote for the charms," Ron said, and Harry agreed.

This approach seemed to subdue most of the walls.  They got three papered and part of the fourth done, but when the final sheets were going up – coincidentally over the spot where the old tapestry had hung – something very odd happened.

The paper bulged in the middle, making Ron swear … then subsided again, leaving a distinctly shaped damp mark.  Harry stared, his throat suddenly dry, as more of the oddly shaped bubbles surged up and sank back, leaving damp spots.

"Is that …."

"Good lord," Lupin said softly, staring.

The stains on the paper were handprints.  Six of them.

 

*

 

Sirius Potter received a letter from his father three days later, during breakfast.

 

 _Dear Sirius,_

 _Work on the house is progressing, although we have had one or two setbacks.  Do you remember me telling you about the Black family tree tapestry in the  drawing room?  Well, we were trying to paper over that bit the other day and  something rather odd happened – a set of strange marks appeared on the paper.  When we investigated further, we discovered that the wall was thicker than it should be, so we decided to take a look behind the plaster._

 _Don't be alarmed, but it looks like the Black family was even nastier than I originally thought, because there was a hollow cavity inside the wall and we  found three skeletons inside –_

Sirius gave a little yelp of excitement that made his friends look up curiously.

"What did you find in your porridge this time?" Tobias asked interestedly – a reference to a little Gryffindor/Slytherin disagreement the day before involving Doxy eggs.

"My dad's found skeletons at our new house!" Sirius announced, delighted.

"Wicked!" Noah exclaimed a little enviously, and Tedjminder nearly choked on his kedgeree.

 

 _The bones are pretty old_ (Harry continued) _but the MLEs are bouncing all over the place about it anyway.  Their healers think two are male and one is female, and the most recent one was probably put into the hole about a hundred years ago, which means that it was quite possibly your namesake's grandparents who did it.  The other two are nearer a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old._

 _We don't know yet how they died, but be prepared for all sorts of stupid stories in the newspapers, because Sirius Black lived here and someone is bound_ _to try and say it was him, even though that's impossible.  (The MLEs supposedly don't tell the press about these things, but everyone knows they're as leaky as cheap cauldron and the_ Daily Prophet _is bound to find out.)_

 _Apart from this, the decorating is going really well and I'm about to start buying some extra furniture.  Would you like a new bed?  Enclosed is a furniture catalogue from a shop that's been recommended to me.  Let me know if there's anything in it you want (although I don't think the bed on page five is a good idea  – Ron says he knows a chap who bought one of those once and the vibrations made his house collapse)._

 

Sirius pulled out the catalogue, gave it a quick glance and stuffed it into his bag to look at later.  He turned the second page of his letter over and continued to read.

 

 _Well, I suppose I'd better get back to work again.  Since we can't do anything else to the drawing room while the MLEs stand around and eat doughnuts and pretend to wave their wands over the hole in the plaster, we're measuring the bedrooms for carpets.  I'm putting you and Tedjminder in adjoining rooms that share a bathroom for now, but you don't have to keep that room if you'd prefer another._

 _Oh, I nearly forgot!  I know I sent you a note at the time, but well done again at making it onto the Quidditch team!  That's excellent news, Squirt – I knew you could do it!  Keep up the practice, though, that's the most important thing.  Let me know when you have your first game._

 _Go, go, Gryffindor!_

 _Love, Dad_

 _P.S. Don't forget to let me know if there's anything you need._

 

"Oy!  Potter!"

Sirius sighed, quickly folding the letter up and hiding it under his plate.

"What do you want, Nott?"

"What's it like being named after a mass murderer, Potter?"  The burly third year Slytherin tossed a creased copy of the _Daily Prophet_ at him with a nasty grin.  "Suppose you must be used to it – being the son of Potty-Potter-the-Parselmouth-Rotter and all."

Sirius pretended to ignore him, but Tobias grabbed the paper and straightened the folds until the heading of the third page was revealed.

 _HOW MANY MORE DIED AT DEATH EATER BLACK'S HANDS?_

Sirius barely glanced at it.  "Dad said they would print something stupid," he said indifferently, more to his friends than to Julius Nott, who was still standing behind his chair.  "The bodies are too old for Sirius Black to have had anything to do with it, and besides – "

"And besides, Sirius Black wasn't a murderer," another voice finished for him crisply.

Nott jumped and turned red.  "Professor McGonagall," he said sullenly.  "I was just showing Potter what the newspaper says, and – "

"Newspapers sometimes lie, Mr. Nott," the Headmistress said dryly.  "It sells more newspapers.  I can assure you that Sirius Black was _not_ a murderer."

"But people saw him kill thirteen Muggles, Headmistress," another Slytherin said, rather bolder than Nott.  "He went to Azkaban for it."

"I repeat: Sirius Black did not kill those Muggles.  And you would know that if you bothered to pay any attention at all to Professor Binns in your History of Magic class."  Professor McGonagall gave them a sharp look.  "Now hurry along to your classes, all of you.  The bell is about to ring."

The Slytherins dispersed, muttering, and Sirius and his friends picked up their book bags.  As the boys turned to leave their table, the Headmistress blocked Sirius's path and twitched the newspaper out from under his arm. 

"Don't worry, Mr. Potter," she told him, and she tapped the newspaper with her wand, making it shred itself into confetti.  Her tone turned grim.  "I'll be writing to the editor about this."

 

*

 

"Why is there a bed in the middle of your kitchen?"

Harry peered around one of the upright posts, looking annoyed.

"I got fed up of walking to the pantry when I got hungry in the night," he said irritably.  "Why do you _think_ there's a bed in the kitchen?  They misdelivered it, of course."

Ron had to breathe in quite deeply to squeeze around one corner of it. 

"A bit inconvenient, isn't it?"

"Noooo … I thought I'd leave it here as an unusual chopping block.  Guaranteed to be a talking point for all my friends."

"Yeah, yeah, point taken.  How are you planning to move it?"

Harry pushed sweaty dark hair back off his forehead and straightened his spectacles.  "That bit I haven't worked out yet."

Ron leaned against the nearest bedpost and the bed tilted alarmingly.  "Oh crap - let's see if the two of us can get this damn thing out of here so we can have a decent cup of tea."

Between them they managed to get the queen-size four-poster up into the bedroom it had originally been destined for.  The other two beds, Harry's own king-size and another queen-size for Sirius's room, had arrived without mishap.  Harry enlisted Ron's help to wrestle the mattresses into place and hang the curtains on all three beds.  Finally, seeing a stack of bedding to one side, Ron insisted on helping to make up Harry's bed.  He was so picky about tucking the corners of the sheets in properly that Harry left him to it while he went to make the tea and by the time he returned Ron had just finished smoothing the bedspread over the top.

Harry paused in the doorway, tea tray balanced on the tip of his wand, watching as his friend tucked the end of the bedspread under the mattress in a finicky way that was quite unlike the messy teenager he remembered.

"No one ever made my bed for me before," he joked.

Ron snorted as he straightened up.

"I charge fifteen Sickles an hour for the privilege," he replied with a twitch at the corner of his mouth, "and it's a Galleon if you want me to warm it for you too."

From the glint in his eye, it was clear he was well aware of the double-entendre.  Harry stared at him, speechless, until Ron's tiny smirk turned to a full grin.

"Are you going to dish that tea up?"

"Seems to me that _you're_ the one who's good at dishing it up," Harry grumbled, recovering himself, and he slid the tea tray onto the small table next to the bed before he could spill it all over his new carpet.  "You wait – I'll scare the living daylights out of you one of these days by taking you up on it."

Ron plonked himself onto the end of the bed and tilted his head to one side, regarding Harry curiously.  "What makes you think it'd scare me?"

Harry shrugged, hoping his face wasn't displaying anything too incriminating, and bent to pour the tea with his back to his friend.

" _Scare_ is maybe the wrong word.  Wouldn't it bother you, though?"

"Well that depends, doesn't it?"

"On what?"

"Whether you give me a choice," Ron said.

Harry gave him a wary look as he handed him his cup of tea.

"Why, do you think I'd force myself on you?" he asked as he sat down on the bed beside Ron.

"Judging by the way you've been acting since you came back, I'd say not," was the rather rueful reply.

Harry couldn't decide if he should be laughing or not.

"Um … you almost sound disappointed about that," he said, trying to make a joke of it.

"Not disappointed, exactly.  But … I know I told you I wasn't pushed into anything when we slept together before, but it never occurred to me … maybe _you_ were."

Ron's voice as he said this was very calm and straightforward, but it was deceptive; Harry noticed there was the barest hint of a shake in his hand as he raised his mug to his mouth.

"I seem to recall that it was me who jumped you," he replied.

"But were you really expecting me to take you up on it?"

"I think I was too stoned to make fine judgements like that," Harry said wryly.

Ron drained his mug and leaned gently back until he was flat on the bed, staring up at the canopy.

"Nice bed," he remarked quietly.  "Comfortable."

Harry looked at him for a moment, then shrugged inwardly and joined him.  They lay there for a while, shoulder to shoulder, not speaking.

Finally Ron sighed softly.  "Do you remember much about that night?"

Harry thought about it for a while. 

"Some," he said finally. 

Actually, what he recalled was that it had been a pretty awkward, messy business.  High on Bill's special blend marijuana joints, they'd been uncoordinated and driven more by enthusiasm than experience.  Neither of them had slept with another boy before.  And thanks to the dope, neither of them had lasted very long.  Had it happened when they were sober, it would have been crucifyingly embarrassing.

"I remember Hermione shrieking and throwing things at us," he added, and he was relieved to hear Ron chuckle.

"Good thing she was too pissed off to remember her wand, or I reckon we'd be missing our tackle today."

There was another long, amicable pause.

"Where is this conversation going?" Harry asked him softly.

"I don't know, mate.  Where do you want it to go?"

Harry looked up at the canopy.  Where _did_ he want it to go?

"I still sleep with blokes occasionally," he said.

"Yeah, I know.  Hermione said something to me to that effect," Ron replied calmly.

"I'm guessing you don't though."

"Well, no.  Respectable married man with three kids and all that.  I wouldn't say I was really looking for alternative action until recently."

Harry turned his head to look at him.  "You've been looking recently?"

"Yeah."  Ron was still contemplating the canopy.  "Don't tell Mum."

"Wouldn't dream of it, mate."

"Thanks."

"So how long have you been looking?"

"Three or four months?"

Harry turned to stare at him sharply again.  "Are you winding me up?"

"Well, you know how it is," Ron told him apologetically.  "You're minding your own business at the train station one day, when suddenly someone walks out of the crowd and – "

Harry gave him a sharp jab in the side with his elbow.  "You arse!"

"Ow!  You asked!  And who are you calling an arse?  Every time I drop a hint, you act like a schoolgirl!"

"I didn't think you were serious!"

"Well, I am," Ron grumbled.  "Just so you know."

"Oh.  Okay then," Harry said, a little disconcerted.  He put a touch of prissiness into his voice.  "But just so _you_ know – I'm not easy."

Ron made an odd little sound, like a groan mixed with a laugh.

"Harry, mate, you never were!"

 

*

 

A week later the MLEs finally (and, it seemed to Harry, rather reluctantly) decided that there was no more information to be gleaned from the hole in the drawing room wall and left the premises, graciously informing Harry that he was free to repair his own brickwork and plaster over it. 

He was standing by the hole later that day, trying to decide if mending it was a better option than taking advantage of the hole to create an arch instead, when the Floo jangled and Ron walked in.  They stared at each other and Harry's jaw dropped.

Ron had a magnificent black eye.

"What happened to you?" Harry demanded.

"This, you mean?" Ron asked, pointing to his eye.  "Oh, that was Scotty.  Little sod clobbered me with his toy cauldron."

"What?!"

"It was an accident, you prat!  I got clobbered enough by my own kids when they were little – I should have known to duck a bit quicker."

Harry relaxed and chuckled.  "Now I come to think of it, Sirius nearly took my eye out with some toy or other once.  Hell of an aim for a baby!"

The corners of Ron's mouth curled into a grin.  "Yeah.  Still, Kate made a big fuss of me so I reckon I came out of it the winner after all."

"Hm."  Harry studied him for a moment, thinking that it might be better if his friend steered clear of his needy sister-in-law's fussing, but only said, "You look like you could do with a cup of tea.  And I've got some stuff in my first aid kit downstairs - let's see if we can at least reduce the swelling a bit."

"I wouldn't let Kate put anything on it but ice," Ron said warily a few minutes later, as Harry pulled a box out of a kitchen cupboard.  "I reckon Bruise Balm is dangerous near the eyes."

"It probably is, but this stuff isn't Bruise Balm," Harry replied as he took a round, flattish jar from the box and unscrewed the lid.  "I got this from Sirius's grandmother - she's a Healer.  She whipped it up for me when it turned out he was a bit of a scrapper.  It's not the first time I've treated a black eye, believe me."

Ron squinted at him.  "Sirius?  But he's only a little chap, like you were!"

"He's a lot feistier than I was," Harry said ruefully.  "I used to run away, not fight.  Now hold still …."

"Ow!"

"Stop whining!"

The ointment took most of the swelling out and reduced the discoloration to the more healing colours of yellow and green.  Ron sighed with relief when he could see properly through his eye again.

"There - all pretty again," Harry teased him.

"Thanks," his friend replied wryly.  "Reckon it can do something about my freckles as well?"

"I don't think you'd be you without your freckles," Harry remarked, as he put the box of first aid supplies away.

"Some people would say that about your scar, but you'd get rid of it if you had the chance," Ron replied mildly.

Harry paused.  "Actually, I don't know that I would.  It's been a part of me for so long now that I don't know if my face would look the same in the mirror.  Besides, it's not like it ever hurts me these days."

He turned away from the stove, intending to get the tea caddy, and found Ron unexpectedly in his space.

"It's faded a fair bit," the redhead observed, brushing Harry's hair back with slightly roughened fingertips.  "I don't reckon most people would know it was there if they didn't know what to look for."

"The _Daily Prophet_ would beg to differ," Harry said, after a noticeable pause.  The light touch had aroused an extraordinary sense-memory - of Ron doing exactly the same thing once when they were teenagers.  When had that happened?  And how had he forgotten it?

"Eh?"

"They make a point of mentioning my scar whenever they write about me."

"Probably going by old photos," Ron said.  Harry got the distinct impression that he wasn't really paying much attention to what they were saying any more.  "I can't even feel it."

Harry could feel it … or feel something, anyway.  But he still wasn't sure if this was the right time.

"You're going to have to move if you want some tea," he said quietly.

Ron blinked.  "What?"

"Tea?" Harry reminded him gently.

Ron, forty years old and all six feet of him, blushed like a schoolboy and jumped hastily out of the way. 

 

*

 

Harry decided against an archway into the drawing room wall, but only because he had doubts about heating the room with a large egress out onto the main stairwell.  Grimmauld Place was inclined to be chilly enough in the winter months without that.

So they bricked the hole up again, plastered over it and finally papered that wall once more.  With the mystery skeletons removed, and with them whatever strange spectral effects they'd had, it was possible to finish the decorating with a minimum of annoyance.  The hardwood floor offered no resistance to a good polishing, and once Harry had laid a nice Turkish carpet in the centre of the room and put some cosy chairs and a couch on it, the room began to look quite welcoming.

"Probably for the first time in its existence," Lupin observed, amused, when he came to view the effect and take celebratory tea with Harry.  "What will young Sirius make of it, do you think?"

Harry grinned.  "He'll move all the chairs to different positions and toss the cushions around.  Then he'll moan at me for putting his baby pictures on the mantelpiece."

Lupin chuckled.

That was the second week in November.  By the end of the month the staircases and passages were finished and carpeted, and Harry had painted the front door and replaced the old tarnished serpent knocker with one he found in a junk shop.  It was made of brass and shaped like a rather jolly gargoyle; Ron said he thought it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen, but it made Harry grin and when he sent a picture of it to Sirius, he seemed to think it was funny too.

All that was left was the top floor and the attics, and during the first week in December Bill Weasley came around to help Harry ward them against marauding schoolboys until he was ready to investigate them further. 

After that Harry stood in the middle of his new drawing room and decided there was only one thing left to do before he began preparing for Christmas - hold a housewarming party.

 


	8. Chapter 8

On the evening of the party Harry spent a lot of time running to the door to welcome, hug or shake hands with people he hadn't seen in many years.  He'd had to rely on Ron for most of the names on the guest list, but he was surprised at how many he recognised when he saw them on his doorstep. 

After that, he spent even more time running to and from the kitchen, replenishing snacks and drinks.

"This is insane," Ron remarked at one point, fanning himself precariously with a tea tray while Harry removed another tray of red pesto palmiers from the oven.  "It's a feeding frenzy up there."

"So long as they're eating, they can't be grumbling," Harry replied philosophically, as he slid the palmiers onto a plate.

"Grumbling?"

"Ernie Macmillan. He's set up a greek chorus of disapproval with Hannah Abbot and Zacharias Smith."

"What about?" Ron demanded indignantly.

"The house," Harry said cryptically, and he turned to greet a newcomer to the kitchen.  "Hullo, Nev!  Everything okay up there?"

"They’re all stuffing themselves, so I think so," Neville replied.  He deposited an armful of used beer glasses in the scullery sink, then strolled back into the kitchen with his hands stuffed in his pockets.  He still looked like an outsized schoolboy.  "Great party, Harry – and good to have you home again, by the way."

"With not a teenaged tantrum in sight," observed Ginny, appearing behind Neville in the doorway.  "The new, improved Harry Potter."

"Thanks," Harry said dryly.  "I had to grow up sometime after all."

"Pity not everyone has," Ron said sourly.

"Macmillan and Abbot?" Ginny asked.  "Don't worry about it.  Nothing could ever make that pair happy, so why bother trying?"

"I'll talk to them in a while," Harry said.  "Let me just make sure there's enough punch – "

"Better still, let me and Ginny do that while you go and be the host," Ron told him firmly, and he gave Harry a push towards the door.

"Good idea," Neville agreed.  "Especially since I saw a couple disappearing upstairs a minute or two ago."

"Good luck to them!" Harry said dryly.  "The bedrooms are all warded off-limits, and the other rooms - "

He was interrupted by a blare of trumpets from somewhere two storeys above.

" – Are all alarmed to stop canoodlers," he finished.

"Now that's just mean!" Ron told him, grinning.

"Why?  I haven't had a chance to christen any of the rooms with wild, furtive sex yet, so why should anyone else?  And I won't have anyone messing around in Sirius's room, especially since he won't see it for another week or so."

"It's _your_ house, Harry," Ginny said, giving him an even firmer push towards the door.  "Any wild sex you have in it doesn't need to be furtive, you know."

"That's debateable."

But he took the hint and went up to the drawing room to face his guests.  On the way, he came face to face with a very red-faced Hermione (who had come home especially for his party) and Bill Weasley, who were hastily making their way down from the second floor.

"You two should know better!" Harry told them, startled and amused.

"That's a bit rough," Bill complained.

"Bill, mate, I'm not as young as I used to be.  When I want the bathroom, I want the bathroom.  I don't want to have to wait until you finish getting your rocks off."

"Very funny," Hermione said sourly.

"London boasts many fine hotels, if you're that desperate," Harry told her unrepentantly.

The drawing room was packed to bursting point.  Harry deposited his fresh platter of palmiers on the snack table, poured himself a glass of lemonade and began to circulate.  It was a very mixed crowd; there were a lot of Weasleys (including Fred and George, though not Kate who had offered to baby-sit both her own and Ginny's children instead), a number of former members of the Order of the Phoenix, Headmistress McGonagall and Professor Sprout from Hogwarts, Ron's father-in-law Laurence Lovegood, a couple of the broomwrights Harry had been testing brooms for, some people from the magical embassies that Harry knew (including Sirius's cousin, who was also Ginny's new brother-in-law), and a couple of individuals he had never met before and strongly suspected were reporters.  The latter were closely inspecting his family photos on the mantelpiece, which made him glad that he'd displayed the ones of his parents and godfather and those of Sirius's baby pictures that also included Cleone.

As he'd already noticed, Ernie Macmillan was standing in one of the window embrasures with Hannah Abbot, Zacharias Smith and a couple of other former Order members, looking dour as he surveyed the throng.  With an inner sigh, Harry made his way over to them.

"Sorry I've been in and out," he said in a friendly tone.  "Have you all managed to grab something to eat and drink?"

"It's not right," Ernie said bullishly, ignoring the question and staring at Harry aggressively.

"Oh – sorry about that.  I made fresh palmiers though."  Harry took a sip of his lemonade.

Ernie gave him a disgusted look.  "Turning this place into just another house isn't right, Potter.  I would have thought _you_ of all people would understand that."

Harry sighed.  "What do you think I should have done with it, then?  Left it as it was?  Sold it?"

"It was Headquarters," Hannah muttered, not looking at Harry.  "It should have been … preserved somehow."

"Like a museum?" he asked her politely.  He noted absently that she had matured very gracefully, although there were lines across her forehead right now that gave her a fretful look.  "Hannah, be realistic.  The house stood empty for twenty years – "

"Only because you left it that way," Zacharias said coolly.  "Nobody denies something should have been done about it long ago, but it wasn't like anyone could touch it with you out of the country and showing no signs of coming back!"

"Was someone planning to stump up the money to restore it, then?" Harry asked him interestedly.

There was a pause.

"The Ministry …." Hannah began weakly.

"Wouldn't pay out a penny, as you all well know," Harry finished for her.  "Unlike the Muggle Government, there's no legal or financial obligation upon the Ministry of Magic to rescue magical buildings of historic interest.  _If_ you could classify Grimmauld Place as an historic monument, and I think my late godfather would have had something to say about that.  The overall history of this house is pretty bad and three or four years as base camp for a bunch of freedom fighters doesn't sweeten it much.  What would you have preferred I do?  Open it to the public?  There was nothing here for anyone to see!  Just empty rooms with no relevance to anyone but those of us who used this place as Headquarters.  Frankly, I think you're being foolishly sentimental."

"That's just like you, Potter," Zacharias said disgustedly.  "Trampling all over the memory of the people who died – "

"Oh, don't be a complete ass, Smith!" Harry told him, losing patience.  "You should know better!  I pay tribute to the ones we lost in the way they would have wanted – by getting on with my life.  I haven't forgotten a single one of them, but if you think they'd have wanted us to stand around in this place in maudlin silence, watching the paper peel off the walls and the floorboards rot, think again!  But since the three of you seem so determined to turn this into a wake …."

Harry turned abruptly and walked over to the fireplace. 

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said, raising his voice a little.  The hubbub died away as his guests turned to face him; Harry was conscious of the many pairs of familiar eyes on him, including Remus Lupin's from over near the window and Ron's by the door.  He smiled a little self-consciously.

"Obviously, I'd like to thank you all for joining me this evening," he said.  "But more importantly, I've just been reminded of the more recent history of this house.  It's had a somewhat chequered past, and lest anyone thinks that I'm trying to erase any of that history by suddenly turning it into a family home, I feel it would be appropriate if we could all pause for a moment and remember those of our friends and families who were lost to us during the house's previous incarnation as the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix."

Harry hesitated in the sudden quiet that followed these words, then he smiled again.  Drawing his wand from his sleeve, he made a sudden, sweeping gesture … and everyone held a small shot glass of a dark amber liquid in place of whatever drink they'd had before.

Harry held his own glass up.  "If I may propose a very traditional toast – to absent friends."

No one hesitated.

 _"To absent friends!"_

 

*

 

"I'd leave all this until morning," Harry said tiredly, as he drained the scullery sink for the umpteenth time and began to refill it with hot water.  "But I know from bitter experience that the last thing I want to face the morning after is a kitchen piled high with dirty dishes."

"I'm with you on that one," Ron admitted.  He leaned against the draining board and wearily ran a cleaning spell over his tea towel, before picking up yet another plate and drying it.

Mrs. Weasley walked in with another tray full of glasses and plates to be washed.  "I think that's nearly all of them, Harry dear.  Are you sure you can manage if Arthur and I leave now?"

"Mrs. Weasley, you've already done more than enough," Harry told her, dredging up a weary smile from somewhere.  "You're a _guest_."

"Oh no, dear, I couldn't possibly leave you with all the tidying up to do."  She put the dishes into the sink and turned to Ron.  "Ron, where on earth has Gareth got to?  I can't find him _anywhere_ and it's really getting late."

"He already left," Ron told her calmly.  "Over an hour ago, actually."

Her brows drew together.  "On his own?  But – "

"Mum, he's _eighteen_.  He's perfectly capable of getting himself home when he feels like it.  I think he went off with one of his mates, so he'll probably stop over at their place for the night.  Wouldn't be the first time."

Mrs. Weasley's expression said exactly what she thought of this, but for once she seemed too tired to wage battle over it.  Sniffing disapprovingly, all she said was, "Well, don't you go staying out till all hours either!  _You're_ not a teenager anymore, Ronald Weasley."

"He knows he's welcome to crash here if he doesn't feel like going home," Harry said peaceably.

"And I'm sure I don't know what has happened to Bill _or_ Hermione …."

"Molly, will you stop fretting and get your cloak!" Mr. Weasley said, popping his head around the scullery door.  "It's nearly one o'clock in the morning and Harry must be wishing us long gone!"

"Your dad has fantastic timing these days," Harry told Ron, amused, when he'd seen the pair of them off through the Floo.  "Bill and Hermione, dear God!  I just hope they made it back to wherever he's staying and aren't screwing on a park bench somewhere instead."

"I'm not even going there, mate."  Ron tossed his tea towel onto the draining board.  "If there's anything else left to wash, it can damn well wait until the morning now.  I'm knackered."

"My thoughts exactly."  Harry led the way back into the kitchen; it was still a mess, but not such an horrendous mess that he would have waking nightmares when he first set eyes on it the next day.  "Do you want a cup of tea or anything?"

"Now there's a thought."

Ron grabbed him by the shoulders, turning him firmly around to face him, took Harry's face in his hands and kissed him.

He'd evolved into a pretty good kisser over the years, demanding but gentle with it, and he still tasted faintly of the powerful whisky liqueur Harry had conjured up for the toast.  When they finally parted, Harry gave him a lazy smile.

"Do you want one lump of sugar with that, or two?" he asked.

Ron's smile held a hint of boyish mischief.  "Two," he said, "definitely _two_."

Harry grinned.  "I checked and there was nobody snogging in the broom-closet or anything," he said.  "We've got the house to ourselves … if you want to stay?"

Ron raised a brow at him.  "Don't I remember you saying something about christening the place with furtive sex?"

" _Furtive_ sounds too much like sex under the stairs," Harry replied.  He allowed himself a luxurious stretch and was delighted to see Ron's eyes following the movement appreciatively.  "I've got a nice, comfy bed upstairs – lots of room for two.  What do you say?"

"Why are we still in the kitchen?"

 

*

 

Harry's memories of their previous encounter were blurred in some places and sharp in others.  He remembered acutely the inexperienced fumbling, the sense of disconnection the marijuana gave the entire experience, the speed with which it was all over, and the dizzy confusion the next morning when Hermione burst in on them.  He was less clear on the details of how they had got from smoking Bill's joints and discussing girls to ripping each other's clothes off.

This couldn't have been more different.  Like the responsible adults they were, they first made sure that the fire in the drawing room was out, the Floo closed, the doors and windows locked, the wards in place, and the lights put out.  Only then did they make their way upstairs.

"I think it's safe to take the wards off the bedrooms and bathrooms now," Harry remarked with a laugh in his voice.

"Good - you wouldn't like my reaction if I got out to the bathroom in the night and had to take a piss with trumpets blasting in my ear," Ron told him rather emphatically.

Harry chuckled and went to make sure that the bathroom was trumpet free.  When he returned, Ron was toeing his shoes off by the side of the bed and slowly unbuttoning his shirt.  It was all so domestic that Harry grabbed him from behind, momentarily stilling his hands.

"Is it me or are we getting old?" he asked the broad shoulders in front of him.  "I know we haven't jumped each other in a score of years, but we're just …."  He stopped.  The words _like an old married couple_ suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

But Ron only laughed quietly.  "If you wanted a mad dash to the bedroom, chucking our clothes off on the way, why didn't you say something before we came upstairs?"

Put like that, Harry had to laugh too. 

"Dunno that I could have managed a dash up the stairs anyway," he admitted ruefully.

"Me either!  I can just about manage the clothes-chucking, though."

"Good."  Harry released him, but made him turn around.  "Come here," he said sternly and he finished undoing Ron's shirt buttons for him.  "That's my job."

Ron's expression began to do very enjoyable things to the pit of his stomach.

"Does that mean I get to take yours off?" the redhead asked.

"Go for it."

Harry finished unbuttoning the cuffs of Ron's shirt; he pushed it back over his friend's shoulders and whistled.

"Crikey!  Have you been working out?"

Ron snorted.  "I make brooms for a living, Harry - it's not an office job, you know!"

Of all the Weasley boys he had been the tallest and thinnest, a skinny sapling of a boy who had once looked as though he might never grow into his gangly limbs and big feet.  Harry well remembered the never-ending pallid legs and bony, freckled shoulders. 

Ron still had freckled shoulders, but he had clearly grown into his bones some time ago.  He wasn't overly muscled, but the muscle was definitely there, sleek and solid under skin that was pale and bore scars here and there - some that Harry recognised from the war on his chest and side, but more on his hands and forearms that had clearly come from his work.  Mercifully, the musculature was all in the arms and shoulders; he didn't possess a washboard stomach as well, or Harry would have felt terribly intimidated.

"I'm pretty fit," he managed, with a small laugh, "but nothing like you, mate."

"So?"  Ron was unconcerned as he returned the favour, unbuttoning Harry's shirt.  "You look fine to me.  Better than fine."

His fingers slid under the collar of the loose shirt to cup the back of Harry's neck warmly.  The second kiss was even better than the first, leisurely, less rushed.  It occurred to Harry, in the portion of his brain that wasn't fully occupied with touching and tasting his friend, that Ron was incredibly calm about this for a man who'd essentially been straight for ninety-nine percent of his adult life.  On the other hand, he had always alternated periods of hyper-emotiveness with periods of laid-back unconcern, and as he'd moved from adolescence to mid- and late-teens the latter had been more common.  Perhaps this was just the way Ron was; if so, Harry envied him for it, for his own adult calm was a hard-won state.

Muscles weren't the only thing that had changed for either of them.  As teenagers they'd both been skinny, rather sun-deprived from being in hiding so much of the time and still suffering from the occasional outbreak of spots.  At the time of their previous encounter they'd neither of them been shaving regularly either.

Ron wasn't the hairiest man he'd ever encountered, but Harry liked the faint brush of the soft red hair on his chest against his fingertips.  He'd once had a brief – _very_ brief – fling with a man in Vienna who actually waxed his chest, back and rear, which Harry thought narcissistic and creepy when he found out, a bit like sleeping with an animated shop dummy.  If he was going to sleep with someone, he preferred to know that they were entirely themselves, regardless of whether that meant chest hair or one breast fractionally larger than the other or an unusual birthmark.  He had no patience with enlargement spells or any other excessive aid to 'beauty', and had fallen out with Cleone on several occasions over the level of make-up she deemed necessary.

Ron was entirely himself when he finished undressing; scars, chest hair, muscled arms, slightly soft stomach and all.  It made Harry feel comfortable about shedding the rest of his own clothes.

"You've grown," he couldn't resist remarking with a grin, as Ron's underwear hit the floor.

"Get over here and I'll grow a bit more," was the cheerful retort, making him laugh.  Ron pushed back the covers of the bed and sat on the edge, giving it an experimental push.  "At least you've got a decent mattress."

"Wouldn't want you to have a disturbed night's sleep, would we?"  Harry gave the redhead a gentle shove until he shifted to the middle of the bed, then followed him, pushing him onto his back and moving to straddle his thighs.

Ron's large, warm hands brushed up Harry's thighs and settled on his rear, squeezing gently.  "You're a pushy, forward little sod, aren't you?  Don't you have any modesty or consideration for my virtue?"

Harry grinned down at him.  "Nah, I'm too horny for all that crap.  Besides – " he gave a little push with his hips and Ron was surprised into a similar response, "I reckon you are too!"

Ron chuckled and transferred one hand to Harry's neck, pulling him down for another kiss.  Harry relaxed into it, which was a mistake for Ron suddenly grabbed him and flipped him over onto his back.

"You're not having this all your own way!" he said, when Harry had got his breath back.

"No?"

"No."

And Ron proceeded to show him exactly what he meant.

 

*

 

Harry drifted awake in the morning to the sensation of light fingers running over the small of his back.  He wasn't the sort of person who woke up and had to stop and think who was in bed with him or why; perhaps it was something to do with sleeping with one eye open during the last years of Voldemort's uprising, but Harry was always aware of his bed-partners.

He turned his head sleepily now to see the expected rumpled red hair and hazel eyes.  Ron had apparently been awake for a while; there was no hint of drowsiness in his face and despite the fact that he'd pulled most of the covers off Harry it was pleasantly warm in the room, suggesting that he'd cast a heating charm at some point.  He was gazing at Harry's side with the greatest concentration, callused fingertips brushing back and forth over a particular spot.

"When did you get this?" he asked quietly.

Harry dragged himself out of the pillow enough to squint over his shoulder, but he already knew what Ron was looking at.  He had a palm-sized tattoo his left hip.

"Must be fif-fifteen years ago," he said around a yawn.  "Before Sirius was born."

"But what is it?"

"A representation of my relationship with Voldemort, in goblin runes."

Ron snatched his hand back.  His eyes snapped to Harry's face, appalled.  "Why would you have something like _that_ printed on you?"

Harry sagged back onto his pillow and let his eyes drift shut.

"Because a large part of the person I am was formed out of that relationship, and Tenlieng - "

"I should have known he'd have something to do with it!"

"He said I needed to learn to accept Voldemort's part in my life.  And truly forgive him, if that was possible."  Harry cracked an eye open and found that Ron's expression was much as he'd expected.  "For what it's worth, he said he didn't expect me to achieve that for a very long time, if at all."

Ron's face relaxed into thoughtfulness. 

"So why the tattoo?" he asked at length.

"A physical reminder," Harry replied.  "It would have been very easy to backslide into old habits once I left Nepal.  It's a different world there, Ron.  It's easy to achieve a state of heightened consciousness when you're physically separated from most of the things that caused your problems in the first place.  When you come back to the modern, western world though … that's another matter.  You know, Tenlieng had never heard of Voldemort or Grindelwald or any of our Dark Wizards, although he did tell me once that he'd felt 'something bad' in the magic once or twice."

"He must be an incredibly powerful wizard," Ron said, fascinated in spite of himself.

"Oh, he is - easily as powerful as Dumbledore.  But I hardly ever saw him use his magic, except once or twice to demonstrate something.  I learned a lot from him."  Harry opened his eyes again and turned over onto his back, tucking one hand behind his head.  "The wands they use over there aren't always made of wood, you know.  It's quite common for them to use a carved human bone - usually an ancestor - and the wands get passed down through the family when someone dies.  And even when they do use a wooden wand, it doesn't have a core like ours.  Tenlieng was particularly sharp about that - they consider most magical creatures holy, but especially dragons, and to kill a dragon to harvest its body parts is sacrilege.  He wasn't too bad about my wand, though, because Fawkes had given the feather willingly."

"Harry mate," Ron said slowly, "if you were … content out there and learned so much from that old man, why did you leave?"

Harry looked at him, startled.  "He wouldn't let me stay."

"Eh?  Why not?"

"I told you before - he said I had to sort out my own life.  He made me leave and told me never to go back, because if he ever saw me again he'd know he had failed me."

There wasn't a lot Ron could say to that, and after a moment Harry decided it would be best if they changed the subject completely.

"Do you fancy some breakfast?" he suggested, sitting up.

Ron was still looking thoughtful, but he nodded.  "Wouldn't mind."

"I'll make some tea as well." 

Harry swung his legs over the edge of the bed, but was suddenly stalled by the sensation of Ron's fingers on his tattoo again.

"I know just about enough goblin to recognise your name and Voldemort's, now that you've told me what I'm looking at," the redhead said, "but what's this third rune here?"

"Dumbledore," Harry said after a pause.  "He was the third side of the triangle."  He shot Ron a bittersweet smile.  "Because if I'm going to try and forgive Voldemort for what he did to me, I need to forgive Dumbledore as well.  Don't I?"

 

*

 

Ron went off to work after breakfast - he worked some rather odd days and hours, including Sunday mornings occasionally - and after that Harry didn't see him for a couple of days.

That was fine.  If they had suddenly been inside each other's pockets constantly, Harry would have been worried; that wasn't the nature of the relationship that had been steadily building between them over the past few months.  He knew Ron would reappear shortly, or he would visit his friend himself for some reason.  Anything else would continue just as it was meant to, and no other way.

Harry went shopping in Diagon Alley during the week, aware that there was now only a couple of weeks before Sirius arrived home for the holiday.  A large tree was easily found and ordered, and the shopkeeper agreed to deliver it the following day, leaving Harry to scour the shops for ornaments and other decorations.

Just before lunch he made his way to Ron's workshop and dragged him away from his lathe to eat pie and chips in The Warlock's Arms, before dragging him into the shops to find Christmas presents.  Ron, it turned out, was already well up on his shopping, but he insisted on purchasing a good broomstick servicing kit for Sirius while Harry debated portable wizard wirelesses for his son.

"No one would know it from his behaviour, but you spoil that kid," Ron observed an hour or so later, when they emerged from the shops with Harry burdened down by bags.

"If you think this is bad, you should see the haul he gets from his grandparents, aunts and uncles," Harry replied, amused.  "I look like a miser by comparison.  Besides, not all of this is for him."

"What about his mother?  Is she likely to turn up again?"

"I doubt it.  Cleone likes to spend Christmas somewhere hot."

"Boring," was Ron's assessment.  "I like Christmas at home."

Harry left Ron at his workshop and Apparated home.  It was pleasant to go through his bags, sorting out gifts and spreading wrapping paper, ribbon and cards out across the dining room table.  Christmas was usually a bit of a mess, depending on where he was staying at the time, and for the first time Harry was able to appreciate the pleasure of having a place of his own where he could spread himself out and not worry about rented furniture or where everything was going to be stored when he moved on.

He had stopped to make his dinner just after dark when he heard a noise outside the scullery door.  Grimmauld Place had a small, high-walled garden at the back of the house; it was rather unkempt at the moment, as Harry had been concentrating entirely on sorting out the interior of the building, and he had only been out there a few times to store equipment and paint in a ramshackle hut by the back door.

The noise happened again, raising the hair on the back of his neck.  He told himself not to be foolish, but his wand was at the ready as he walked through the scullery and cautiously unbolted the back door.  Then he quickly swung it open and stepped back.

For a moment he thought he'd been imagining things.  There was a lamp above the back door that flickered into life as soon as the door was open and it spread a comforting pool of light several feet outwards.  For a moment there was nothing there … then a small, forlorn figure slunk into view.

It was a dog.  _Not_ , thankfully, a large, black, Grim-like dog, but one of obvious mixed-breed the general size and shape of a small greyhound.  It was hard to tell what colour it was really supposed to be, for its fur was matted and filthy from the recent bad weather, but every rib stood out and a pair of ears that should have been perked lay flat against its skull.  One showed signs of having been damaged in some accident.

"Good lord!" Harry said blankly.  The dog whined and grovelled.  "How on earth did you get in here, old chap?" 

There was a gate into the garden, but it was high and the lock and hinges had been rusted shut for years.  For a split second Harry wondered if this was an Animagus, but if that was the case he would soon know; the household wards were set up to force Animagi to resume their human shape as they passed the threshold, a basic precaution Lupin had insisted upon during the war.

"You'd better come on in and have a meal and a bath," Harry told it and he stepped back, holding the door open. 

After a moment or two of hesitation, the dog crept inside and promptly retreated under the sink, watching Harry with big, mournful eyes.

Not an Animagus, then.

"I won't be a sec," Harry told it, feeling vaguely foolish talking to a dog-that-clearly-wasn't-an-Animagus, but he left it there and went back into the kitchen to take his dinner off the hob for the time being.  When he returned, he had a couple of spare towels and a box of pure soap flakes with him.

In the corner of the scullery was a huge old copper boiling pan that Harry had found in one of the kitchen cupboards and not liked to get rid of.  He pulled it out now and tapped it with his wand until it expanded several times to make a reasonable bathtub, which he filled with warm water and a handful of soap flakes.  The dog watched these preparations with apprehensive eyes, and when Harry tried to persuade it to come out from under the sink it curled up even more tightly in its hiding place.

Clearly this was not going to be easy.  Not fancying having to chase a filthy mutt around the house if it made a break for it, Harry hastily shut the door into the kitchen and tried again, this time using a charm to exert some pressure.  Five minutes later the dog was in the tub; not happy about it, but crouching and shivering in the water as Harry scrubbed him (for it was quickly revealed to definitely be a him).

Free of dirt and eventually dried off, the dog was revealed to be darkly brindled with white highlights here and there.  He had a lurcher-ish look to him, with a long thin tail and comical tufts over his eyes, but with his fur clean, dry and soft he looked less wretched.  Harry finally permitted him to enter the kitchen, where he had to scramble around to find his new friend a suitable meal.  The dog ended up helping Harry to eat his casserole, accompanied by some crusts of the previous day's bread.

Acquiring a dog had not been part of Harry's plans for his future.  Had anyone asked him he would have said that he wasn't really a dog person, and in any case he would never have considered taking on a dog like this one.  But he found he wasn't proof against the mournful eyes and tentatively wagging tail, which reminded him with sudden acuteness of another dog once that had slept on his bed to stave off his nightmares one summer and looked at him with just such liquid and expressive eyes.

Harry sighed and told himself he was an idiot, but when he took his tea up to the drawing room the dog followed at his heels, and like the fool he was Harry found an old blanket to spread across one half of the sofa so that his new-found friend could make himself comfortable next to him.

He told himself he was doing it for Sirius; like all boys, his son would love to have a pet.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Two days before Christmas, Harry went to Kings Cross Station to collect Sirius and Tedjminder.  With him went the dog (he didn't go anywhere without the dog anymore - it howled pitifully if he tried) and they drove there in a rented car, Harry not fancying the idea of Flooing two young boys with trunks home through Christmas traffic on the network.  By the time he got to the station and found parking, however, he was beginning to regret not attempting to get a one-way portkey instead.  Muggle traffic was worse than Floo traffic.

At least Platform Nine and Three Quarters was less busy at this time of year.  Harry quickly spotted his son and his friend; Sirius waved excitedly and broke into a trot, dragging his trunk behind him, and Tedjminder had to hurry to catch up.

"Dad!  You've got a _dog!_   Brilliant!  Why didn't you tell me?  What's his name?  Where – "

"Slow down!" Harry chuckled.  He turned to the other boy.  "Hey there, Tedjminder!  Did you have a good term?  Here, let's get those trunks onto a trolley and go – I've got a car outside the station, but it's on a parking meter – "

"You've got a car as well?"

"It's only rented, I thought it would be easier.  Here, can you take Scruffy's lead?"

" _Scruffy?_ "  For a moment Sirius looked indignant, then he looked at the dog again and gave him an apologetic pat.  "I s'pose he is a bit.  Come on then, Scruffy …."

Much as Harry had expected, boy and dog at once settled into an easy alliance and they all made it out to the car without incident.  Tedjminder was rather excited to get the front seat on the journey home (having never ridden in a Muggle car before), a piece of generosity on Sirius's part that was largely prompted by his desire to sit in the back and get to know Scruffy better.  Harry wondered if he was going to have problems separating them when it was time for Sirius to go back to school.

The journey to Grimmauld Place was filled with hundred-miles-an-hour chatter as the two boys tried to tell Harry everything at once about the last three months.  It was just as well, he thought, that he'd been to Hogwarts himself; if he hadn't been intimately familiar with the school's ways from a pupil's point of view, he would probably never have understood half of what they were trying to tell him.  It was a messy two-way stream of consciousness involving Quidditch, lessons, pranks, meals, teachers, friends and assorted plants and animals.

"So how did you get Scruffy?" Sirius asked finally, when he'd temporarily run out of things to say about school.

"He turned up in the garden one evening," Harry replied.  "I've no idea where he came from, but no one's come banging on the door to demand their dog back, so it looks like he's staying."

"We have a garden too?"

"It's not very big," Harry told him apologetically.  "And it's a bit of a mess at the moment, but yes.  We have a garden."

"Wicked."

Tedjminder had other things on his mind.  "Did you keep the skeletons, Mr. Potter?" he asked eagerly.

Harry chuckled.  "Sorry – no!  The MLEs took them away, to see if they can find out who the people were.  I've plastered over the hole in the wall now – "  Both boys groaned in disappointment.  "There was nothing else to see!  It was just a hole, and I really couldn't have the wall looking like someone had blasted a hole through it for the rest of the winter."

"Did the house really belong to your godfather?" Sirius demanded, leaning over the back of Tedjminder's seat.

"Yes.  And sit back, please – why haven't you got your seatbelt on?  If we have an accident, you'll go flying through the windscreen.  This isn't like flying a carpet, you know."

Sirius obediently clipped his seatbelt into place.  "Have you used the carpet at all since you came back to England, Dad?  Is it still flying okay?"

"I took it out in the garden a couple of weeks ago," Harry replied.  "I daren't fly it properly though, Squirt, it's illegal in this country.  In fact, since we've both got brooms now I'm thinking of getting rid of the carpet, but I'll talk to you about that later."

 

*

 

It was bedlam when they got home.  Sirius and Tedjminder spent nearly an hour racing around the house with Scruffy at their heels, while Harry took their trunks to their rooms, returned the car to the rental agent, and made dinner.

The boys were inclined to be grumpy about the wards that firmly prevented the pair of them from entering any of the undecorated areas, especially the top floor and attics.

"But there's probably loads of interesting stuff up there!" Sirius complained, when Harry explained about possibly dangerous things in the attics.

"You won't miss anything!" Harry assured him.  "I won't be going up there yet, because I need someone with me in case anything goes wrong.  Surely you've covered that in Defence Against The Dark Arts by now!  Never go anywhere potentially dangerous without someone to cover your back."

"I could cover your back," Sirius protested.

"Maybe when you're seventeen, Squirt.  For now, I need someone who won't get a summons from the Ministry."

Sirius frowned, pushing his mashed potato around his plate. 

"What about Mr. Weasley?" he asked abruptly.  "Can't _he_ back you up?"

Harry looked at him, mildly surprised.  "I'm sure he would, but I know a bit about the kind of stuff left in this house and really I need Remus Lupin or Ron's brother Bill.  Ron was here helping me to fix the house, you know.  He knows all about it and he suggested his brother."

"Oh."  Sirius seemed to be on the verge of asking a difficult question for a moment, but then he apparently changed his mind, for after a moment's silence he changed the subject.

The three of them spent the rest of the evening decorating the tree in the drawing room.  This wasn't, of course, a tradition for Tedjminder's family but the boy seemed perfectly happy to join in, so Harry didn't worry too much about it.  He'd found a couple of sturdy step-ladders in the library which were useful for the kids to use to get the uppermost ornaments onto the tree, and one of the pet stores in Diagon Alley had rented him some real fairy lights (current legislation banned the outright purchase of fairies for use on Christmas trees) who were eager to be about their business once he'd fed them with honey water.  Sirius and Tedjminder had a lot of fun directing the tiny creatures to the best spots on the tree.

Later, after the boys had gone to bed, Harry did his usual nightly locking-up routine and set off up the stairs himself.  He put a head around Tedjminder's door to make sure he was all right and found the boy already fast asleep, but when he looked in on Sirius his son was sitting up in bed, waiting for him.  Harry was unsurprised to find that Scruffy was curled up on the bed too, long nose tucked under his tail and solemn eyes watchful.

"I've got his basket in my room," he told Sirius, as he took a seat next to him.  "If you like, I'll bring it in here for him.  I think you'll both sleep more comfortably if he's in it."

"He's okay," Sirius replied, reaching out to pat the dog's head.  Scruffy responded with a slow thumping of his tail against the blankets.

"He snores," Harry warned, amused.  "And has noisy dreams – it gave me the fright of my life when he suddenly started yipping in his sleep the other night."

Sirius sniggered.  Harry put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a gentle squeeze.

"You sure you're okay, Squirt?  Not having any problems at school or anything?"

"Nope.  It's brilliant."  And Sirius grinned like an urchin.  "We beat Hufflepuff into the ground at the last game, Dad!  My broom really goes like smoke."

"Ron will be pleased," Harry said, grinning back at him.  "He keeps asking about your broom – I think he wants to make some more like it.  Has Tedjminder tried flying it again?"

"A couple of times, but I don't think he really likes flying much," the boy replied.  From his expression, he clearly didn't understand this at all.

"My friend Hermione didn't either," Harry told him, "and it always really annoyed her, because she prided herself on being better at doing everything the rest of us did.  Some people just don't have a head for flight."

Sirius digested this while Harry reached out and scratched Scruffy's ears.

"Oh, I forgot!" he said suddenly, and he reached over to his bedside table and picked up a cream-coloured envelope.  "Professor McGonagall asked me to give you this."

Harry raised his brows.  "What have you done that she needs to write to me?"

"Nothing!" Sirius said indignantly. 

Harry grinned at his expression as he opened the letter.  Inside was a single sheet of parchment bearing the school crest and the headmistress's credentials.  The note was surprisingly brief.

"She's coming to see me tomorrow," Harry said, surprised.  "'Something to discuss of an important nature' - are you _sure_ there's nothing she wants to tell me about you?  Although she'd surely just write if there was a problem, unless …."  He paused and looked at his son.  "Have you heard from _Maman_ lately, Squirt?"

"Nope."  Sirius didn't seem to feel this was a problem either.  " _You_ know what _Maman_ 's like.  She hasn't written to me since I went back to school.  _Grand-père_ and _Grand-mère_ have written, and Aunt Adele.  They didn't say anything about her getting married either," he added rather pointedly.

"Ah well, I didn't think she really would," Harry replied absently.  "I just wondered if she was trying to take you away from Hogwarts again."

"You won't let her, will you, Dad?"

The anxious tone of this brought Harry's head up sharply.  "Of course not!  _Maman_ is always your mother, Sirius, but since she chooses not to spend much time with you, I'm afraid she doesn't get to make important decisions about your life.  That's my job and no one else's until you're old enough to make them for yourself.  Besides," he added, seeing Sirius relax a little, "I wrote to Madame Maxime at Beauxbatons and I don't think _Maman_ was quite telling me the truth when she visited last time.  Madame Maxime had already spoken to Professor McGonagall and didn't expect to see you this year.  And she says she told _Maman_ so back in July."

Sirius looked relieved.

"Anyway," Harry continued, putting the letter back in its envelope, "this throws a bit of a Niffler into the works.  I was planning to take you and Tedjminder to Diagon Alley tomorrow, in case you had any last minute shopping you wanted to do.  Ron was going to come with us and have lunch with Gareth and the twins … would you mind going on ahead with him, while I talk to Professor McGonagall?  I can meet you all there."

"Okay," Sirius replied calmly.  There was a slight pause, then he added, "I like Mr. Weasley."

Harry smiled.  "Good."

But Sirius was pleating the edge of his sheets thoughtfully, clearly trying to decide how to say something.

"You've known him for a really long time, haven't you, Dad?" he said.

"Well, yes.  I met him on the school train."  Harry felt a nervous wriggle in his stomach; it didn't take a genius to work out where this conversation might be heading.  "Is there something you want to ask, Squirt?"

"Are you … I just wondered …."  Sirius looked uncomfortable as only an adolescent could.  "I mean, I know you like him but … do you _like_ him?  Is it – you know?"

"Sort of," Harry said carefully. 

Not for the first time, he was grateful that he'd talked to Sirius about sex as and when he thought he was ready to understand the different bits of it, and not all in one hideously embarrassing conversation when the boy was already old enough to have had a lot of misinformation from his friends.  The talk about men kissing men had happened when Sirius was eight and had, of necessity, included mention of the fact that Harry himself occasionally kissed men.

He hadn't realised that Sirius might think he and Ron were closer than friends, though, especially as his son had clearly been thinking about this before he went back to school.  He wouldn't be asking now if he hadn't.

 _One of us is getting obvious in our old age,_ he reflected ruefully, _but the question is – is it me or Ron?_

"Does that bother you?" he asked.

Sirius shrugged.  "Not really.  I like him.  I just wondered, you know?  You talked about him a lot in your letters."

"Well, he _was_ helping me to fix the house."  Harry smiled wryly.  "He's a good friend.  We were pretty close when we were kids and … well.  It's more than friends now, but I don't know whether it'll stay more than friends or just go back to the way we were."

"I don't mind if it's him," Sirius decided, wriggling under the covers and settling himself against his pillows.  "He's not creepy like that bloke in Vienna."

Harry smothered a laugh.  "Yeah, Franz did turn out to be a bit weird, didn't he?"  He stood up and reached over to ruffle Sirius's hair affectionately.  "I'm off to bed, Squirt.  Sleep tight."

"G'night, Dad."

 

*

 

Christmas Eve in Diagon Alley was a nightmarish experience, as the magical community all fought to buy last minute gifts and provisions before the shops closed at three o'clock.  It was at times like this that Ron's height was a distinct advantage, as it ensured that he didn't lose track of Harry's son or his friend as they all pushed their way through the crowds.

"I need to get something for your Dad," Ron said to Sirius at one point.  "What do you think he'd like?  I've been racking my brains for a couple of weeks."

"He needs an owl," Sirius suggested, after a moment's consideration.  "I've got Gerda, but she's with me at school and Dad doesn't have an owl of his own."

"Good thinking!  He used to have a Snowy Owl called Hedwig – has he told you about her?  She died during the war."

So they made a detour to Eeylops Owl Emporium and after a lengthy debate about the merits of different owls in the shop, Ron selected a very pretty Long Eared Owl and asked the proprietor to deliver it to his house.

After that, they collected Gareth from Ollivanders and the twins from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and made their way to The Leaky Cauldron where they found Harry waiting for them, having reserved a table.  He was looking a little preoccupied but he smiled when they joined him and made an effort to take an interest in the boys' chatter.

"Are you all right, mate?" Ron asked him in an undertone, while one of old Tom's waiters took the boys' orders.  "What did McGonagall want?"

"She took ten points from Gryffindor and told me I have a detention tomorrow evening with Filch," Harry replied lightly.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to poke my nose in – "

"No, it's okay."  Harry touched his arm lightly.  "It's just … something I need to think about for a while, okay?  I'll tell you about it in a day or so.  Are we still on for dinner on Boxing Day?"

"Of course."

"I'll probably talk to you about it then."

And with that Ron had to be content.

 

*

 

There was one wonderful difference between wizard households and Muggles on Christmas Day; no television or computers.  Harry counted this an enormous blessing, since it at least kept the noise levels to an acceptable level and there were no fights between the kids over electronic toys.  Sirius was also past the age of wanting to get up at the crack of dawn to open presents, so Harry was able to get up at a sane hour and leave the two of them in the drawing room after breakfast to open parcels and play board games while he got the dinner started.

Ron made a brief appearance midmorning to drop off Sirius and Harry's gifts.  After Sirius had expressed his gratitude for his broomstick servicing kit, Harry dragged Ron into the kitchen to press his present into his hands.

It was the flying carpet he and Sirius had brought to England with them.

"Harry, I can't take this – " Ron began.

Harry put a hand over his mouth, silencing him.  "Yes – you can.  I've thought about it a lot and talked to Sirius about it, and we both want you to have it.  Ron, it's not like we can use it in this country!  It's illegal for me to fly it in public.  But you're a broomwright, which is different because you deal with magical modes of transport for a living.  I checked at the Ministry weeks ago.  So long as you can say you own it for your own professional interest, it's legal.  So please – take it.  It deserves to be owned by someone who can make full use of it.  It's a good little carpet."

"Since you put it like that …."  Ron began to smile, and he put it down on the kitchen table.  "So long as you promise to teach me how to fly it properly."

"Well, of course!"

"Good.  Now come here." 

And Ron dragged him into the pantry for a snog.

Lupin arrived promptly at twelve, by which time Harry felt it was safe to leave the kitchen for a few minutes to exchange presents.  He'd bought a fine new winter robe for his father's friend; Lupin wasn't the impoverished werewolf he'd been when Harry was a boy, but he still tended to live very frugally.  Sirius (advised by Harry) had bought him a large box of marzipan sweets.  In return Lupin brought books for the pair of them, plus one for Tedjminder about ancient eastern magics which was in his native language.  He also carried a large box of crackers, which made dinner a lively meal.

Afterwards, while Sirius and Tedjminder disappeared with Scruffy in tow to play Sirius's new wizard wireless in his room (and sneak much-needed post-feast naps, Harry suspected), he and Lupin settled on the sofa in the drawing room with a bottle of wine between them and chatted.

Lupin looked brighter and more cheerful than Harry had seen him in a long time – possibly since Sirius Black's death, in fact.

"Your son is quite a live wire!" he told Harry with a chuckle.  "I can't help thinking – and please don't be offended by this – that he's much more like your father than you.  He has all of James's confidence and charm, although thankfully not his swelled head.  You always seemed a lot less sure of yourself, but there's none of that with young Sirius."

Harry smiled.  "I'm glad he's more confident than I was.  I spent a lot of my time while I was at Hogwarts wondering what was going to happen next.  There was always something new popping up that I didn't know anything about but which everyone around me took for granted.  Sirius doesn't have that problem."  He hesitated for a moment, then asked softly, "You told me a while back that you thought my dad would have liked him.  Did you really mean that?"

"Good lord, yes, Harry," Lupin said, a little surprised by the question.  "James would have adored him."  More gently, he added, "He looked forward to you growing up and going to Hogwarts, you know.  When you were born, all he talked about was how he would teach you to ride a broom so you could play Quidditch and how he was sure you were going to have Lily's intelligence ….  Nothing would have made him and Lily happier than to know you grew up and had a son yourself.  The biggest shame is that they aren't here to help you raise him.  Although I suspect he would have been spoiled rotten if they were."

Harry laughed a little at that.  "He's spoiled rotten by the grandparents he has!  Have you _seen_ that huge pile of stuff Cleone's family sent?  I had twelve owls recuperating in the scullery yesterday, not to mention that extraordinary bird Tedjminder's parents sent.  Reminded me of some of the birds Snuffles sent to me that year he was on the run, now I come to think of it."

Lupin smiled at the memory.  "Yes … how well I remember them!"

There was a reflective silence for a while.  Then Harry sat up and refilled their glasses.

"Remus," he said hesitantly, "could I ask your advice about something?"

"Of course."

"It's just that … well, I had a visit from Professor McGonagall yesterday.  She told me that her Defence Against the Darks Arts teacher has just announced her pregnancy and intention to leave at Easter."

"Ah!"  Lupin's eyes began to crinkle at the corners.  "I'm afraid Minerva coming to you was my fault, Harry."

Harry raised a brow.  "Really?"

"Yes.  She asked me if I would consider taking the post, but I'm afraid I'm rather too comfortable at the library these days.  Going back to Hogwarts to teach would be … stressful.  But I know you're currently unemployed and it seemed to me that you were the obvious second choice."

"It would only be for the summer term initially," Harry said.  He swirled his wine in his glass idly, his brow furrowed.  "I wasn't sure what to say, to be honest, so I said I'd let her know by the New Year.  But it's not like I'm a teacher – "

"How many of the appointees to that post _have_ been teachers?" Lupin asked, raising a brow.  "I'm probably the only one since Quirrell and we know how well he turned out, don't we?  Personally, I think the post has rather thrived on having professors who aren't traditional teachers.  Defence Against the Dark Arts shouldn't be taught by someone who doesn't have hands-on experience of the subject and in that respect, Harry, there are few people who are as well qualified as you.  Besides, in case you've forgotten you were the only real teacher your year-mates had one year and you taught them magnificently.  If you can do that at fifteen, what will you be able to do as an adult?"

He took a sip of his wine, letting this sink in with Harry, then added, "It's just one term initially.  What could it hurt to try?" 

Harry sat back, unsure of what to say to this.

"Or do you have some other reason for hesitating?" Lupin asked him gently.

Harry saw the knowing smile in the older man's eyes and felt himself blush.

 

*

 

"The good thing about Boxing Day," Ron observed, "is that everyone gorged themselves silly the day before and don't mind a bit of cold meat and fried spuds for dinner.  Ginny and Kate came over first thing and made a corker of a trifle for afters for us, though."

He tossed a tea towel over his shoulder and set about carving up leftover turkey and ham.

"Anything I can do?" Harry asked, feeling a bit redundant.

"You can help me set the table in a minute, if you like, but for now would you just pour the tea and tell me what's up with you?"  Ron paused and raised a brow at his friend.  "You're like a long-tailed kneazle in a room full of rocking chairs."

"Sorry."  Harry did as he was told and poured two mugs of tea.  From somewhere deep within the house there were several muffled bangs and raucous laughter, followed by Scruffy barking excitedly.  "What on earth are they doing?"

"Probably better not to ask, mate.  Fred and George came over yesterday afternoon and left a suspicious box with Marius and Walter."

Harry shuddered.  "I don't know how you sleep at night!"

Ron grinned.  "My two aren't like their uncles.  There's a line they don't cross and I told you before - they aren't in it for the mayhem, they just like experimenting."

"Why doesn't that reassure me?"

Ron chuckled.  Then Gareth appeared in the doorway of the kitchen with a book under his arm, looking vaguely put out. 

"I'm going out to the shed," he remarked.  "Probably quieter …."

"Why don't you go in my workshop?" Ron suggested calmly.  "It'll be a bit warmer in there, but take your cloak, eh?  And here - have a chunk of cake."

Gareth accepted both cake and cloak, smiled at Harry in a absent-minded way, and disappeared out of the back door.

"He's really like Luna, isn't he?" Harry observed, watching him go.

"Yeah.  He's good kid.  Ollivander's dead chuffed with him, according to one of my mates. Says he has potential."

Ron sounded justifiably proud of this, making Harry smile.

"What are the twins planning to do when they leave school?" he asked.

"Work for their granddad.  That's been on the cards for a while - they were in and out of _The Quibbler_ 's offices when they were kids, you couldn't keep them away.  I think Laurence is planning to hand the business over to them if it all works out okay.  He was going to hand everything over to Luna, you know, but … well."

Ron finished carving the turkey and turned his attention to the ham.  "So … are you going to sit down and tell me what's bothering you?"

Harry took a seat at the table, cradling his mug in his hands nervously.

"It's about McGonagall visiting me the other day," he said after a moment.

"Yeah, I guessed that.  What's she said to put you in a twist?"

"She wants me to take over as Defence teacher at Easter."

"I thought it might be something like that."  Ron continued carving the ham calmly.

Harry blinked.  "You did?"

"Yeah.  Walter told me Professor Skipper announced she was pregnant just before lessons ended on Friday.  Stands to reason she'd want to quit around Easter-time, which means finding a replacement sooner rather than later.  And with Remus holed up at the library like a hermit-crab, McGonagall's going to be looking around for someone she knows she can trust with the kids."  Ron shot Harry a quick grin.  "You're here, you're unemployed and God knows you have the experience, so …."

"I seem to be the only one who thinks this might not be a brilliant idea," Harry grumbled.

"Well - what _were_ you planning to do with yourself, now that the house is finished?"

"The house that I'll hardly ever see if I go to work at Hogwarts?" Harry asked pointedly.

Ron raised his brows.  "When we first started fixing it up, you told me that if you started taking on charity work again, it would be shut up while you were away anyway."

"Trust you to remember that," Harry mumbled, making Ron snort.  "Look, I just … it means I'll probably have to live at the school, or at the very least live in Hogsmeade."

"So?"

Harry looked at him.  Apparently Ron wanted words of one syllable. 

"You live in Dorset," he said.  "It makes shagging on a whim a bit tricky."

"We're grown men, Harry.  We can plan."  Ron sighed and put the carving knife down.  "If you're thinking of turning this down purely because of me - then don't.  If you have some other reason for not wanting to take the job, that's fine, but you shouldn't make this about us, you know."

"I'm not, I just - "  Harry stopped, and sighed.  "I suppose what I really want to know is where you think we're going together.  Because if I disappear up to Hogwarts, it could really mess things up for us."

Ron grabbed a spare chair and pulled it up in front of Harry, taking a seat. 

"Where do _you_ think we're going?" he asked.

"I don't know!" Harry replied, frustrated.  "That's why I'm asking you!"

"Can I be blunt?" Ron asked him.

"I wish you would."

"I'm not looking to get married again."

They looked at each other.

"I'm being honest here, okay?" Ron said quietly.  "I had some good years with Luna and I was all set to spend the rest of my life with her, but it didn't work out that way.  And for a little while afterwards it was difficult, like it was when you left after the war, but I got over it and carried on.  I've got a pretty good life, Harry.  I've got three great kids and I'm happy in my job.  And I'm not poor like Mum and Dad were when we were kids; I'm not saying I'm rich, because I'm not, but I've got enough.  When you came back at the beginning of the summer that was the icing on my cake.

"And if nothing had ever happened between us it wouldn't have mattered to me, because my life is pretty good and having you around again - not all of the time, but knowing you were there if I wanted to talk to you - that was enough.  What I'm not looking to do, and what I _can't_ get into Mum's head, is that I'm not looking for another big upheaval in my life at this stage.  I don't want to get married again or start shacking up with someone.  I don't want all the hassle of finding a place together, trying to work out how the kids fit in, sorting out finances, and trying to get used to having another person in my space all the time."

He sat back, looking at Harry for a moment, then added gently, "And truthfully, I don't think you do either.  Because if you'd wanted any of those things, you would have done them a long time ago - wouldn't you?"

Harry couldn't disagree with him.

"I think maybe one of the reasons Cleone walked out was because I wasn't prepared to commit to her, even after Sirius was born," he admitted.  "We talked about it, but … I wasn't keen and she knew it."

Ron shrugged.  "Nothing wrong with that, mate, so long as you can admit it.  I'd have been a bit surprised if you had settled, to be honest, after the way you were brought up.  It's not like your aunt and uncle were a good example of normal married life."

"True," Harry said wryly.  "So … where _are_ we going?"

Ron reached out and squeezed his arm briefly.  "If you want to take that job, mate, _take it_.  I'm behind you all the way.  I think you'd make a good Defence teacher."

"And we go back to being good friends?" Harry asked, trying to hide his reluctance.

Ron rolled his eyes.  "No, you prat!  Not unless you _want_ to go back to being just friends?"

"Not really," Harry replied, beginning to smile.  "I've been enjoying the last few weeks - it'd be pretty tough not being able to grope you when I feel like it."

"There you go then!"  Ron sat back.  "Like I said - we've just got to plan things a bit."  He began to grin.  "Could be a lot of fun at that - "

He was interrupted by an even louder crash from the rooms above, followed by a short silence then angry shouting.  Moments later Scruffy raced into the kitchen, tail between his legs, and scrambled under Harry's chair.  The two men looked at each other.

"You were saying something about the hassle of fitting the kids in?" Harry said wryly.

Ron gave him a knowing look.  "All this could be ours.  Who wouldn't be tempted?"

They laughed and went to sort it out - together.

 

 **The End**

 **(almost)**

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Epilogue**

 

Harry stepped out of his office on the first morning of classes after Easter and reminded himself that he wasn't nervous.  He'd faced worse things than a room full of teenagers, although it was just typical of his luck that his first lesson was with the second-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws.

He'd spent the past few weeks doing nothing but read syllabuses and review spells.  It was all clear-cut, fortunately.  The lesson plans had been drawn up by Professor Skipper at the beginning of the year, the examinations board was very clear in its requirements, and all he had to do was make sure the little darlings learned their lessons.  That was the sticking point, of course, but there was nothing to do but try his best.  He tried to remember what it had been like teaching the DA when he was at school.  Professor McGonagall had told him briskly that it would be even easier than that; back then he'd been dealing with his peers, who hadn't been easily impressed by him.  This time he was an adult and had genuine authority over his pupils. 

Bearing in mind the fiasco that had been Professor Lockhart's first class, Harry told himself he would believe _that_ when he saw it.

He paced a little in front of the blackboard until the door at the far end of the classroom suddenly opened and in they all poured.  He tried to make it look like he was scanning the entire horde, but he had eyes for only one grinning face.  Sirius took a seat right at the front, of course, with the other three squeezing in beside him on the bench.

Harry waited until they had all settled down a little and were watching him expectantly, then he stopped in front of his desk and dug his hands into his jeans pockets.

"Good morning," he said, smiling around impartially.  "As you already know by now, I'm Professor Potter and I'll be teaching your Defence Against the Dark Arts classes until the end of the school year.  Before we go any further, I'd just like to introduce my assistant Professor Scruffy …."  Scruffy scrambled out of the dog-basket under Harry's desk and trotted to his side, tail waving.  There were a few giggles and "Ah!" sounds from the girls.  "Don't worry if he starts wandering around during the lesson; he'll just be checking to make sure no one's cheating or nodding off."

This caused a little silence to fall, and Harry distinctly heard Sirius muffle a snigger.

"Okay," he said calmly.  "Now I'd like you all to pop your wands and books back into your bags for now, but keep your quills and parchment at the ready because we're going to have a little test."

Groans, followed by them all reluctantly stowing their wands and books away.  Harry grinned to himself.

He'd had an owl from Lupin only that morning with a good luck card that said _DADA Professors Do It With Constant Vigilance_ on the front.  And the previous evening Ron had visited him in his new lodgings in the castle and had told him, firmly but sincerely, "It'll be fine.  You're going to do brilliantly, you're exactly the right person to do this.  And I know you – you're going to love it."

Harry hadn't been too sure even then, but _now_ … now he was sure.  It was feeling pretty good; better, if he was honest with himself, than anything else he'd done since the war.

A little under two years previously, Sirius's letter from Hogwarts had arrived with the mail and at once given Harry a terrible dilemma.  In spite of everything he'd said to the people around him at the time – and he'd done a lot of fast talking back then – the decision, first to send his son to his own school and then to eventually return to England properly himself, had been a difficult one.  It had seemed to him that coming back might well open up a box of unnameable problems, like one of the sinister trunks full of relics still lurking in the attics of the house at Grimmauld Place.  And so it had opened up a casket of old troubles but, as was often the way with such things, those troubles shrivelled into nothing in the light of day. 

He had come back and for the first time he realised he could honestly say that he had come home.  It was nothing to do with having a house and choosing to make his life in England; this was the place where his parents had brought him into the world and died to save his life, where he had grown up, gone to school, suffered, fought, and shed blood.  More importantly still, this was where he had formed his first friendships with the people who would stay with him throughout his life, however far away they sometimes were; this was where he had first loved and been loved and had first known what it was to be a family.  He had travelled the world, had formed new friendships – many ephemeral, a few lasting – and had fathered his son, but it wasn't until he came back to this place, where it had all started, that he felt that his feet were on truly solid ground once more. 

This was where he belonged.  This was home.

The class was waiting expectantly, quills poised above parchment, and Harry couldn't hold back a sudden, broad smile

"Everyone ready?" he said out loud.  "Okay then.  Question one …."

 

 **\- The End -**


End file.
